THESIS II
HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE
NATURE OF SOCIETY
- Prescott Johnson
Human Dignity: This Century and the Next,
Ed., Rubin Gotesky & Erwin Laszlo
(New York: London & Breach, c1970
And
The Philosophy Forum
Vol. 10, December, 1971
* * * *
I wish to begin this discussion by reference to an incident which occurs in Euripides Iphegenia in Tauris. The heroine is at Tauris, far from her home in Argos, serving as High Priestess in the temple of Artemis. she is the lost loved one, awaiting recognition, redemption, and restoration. The day comes when she is found by Orestes, her brother, and placed on the ship which is to carry her to her home and the fulfillment of her dreams and hopes. But these‑-indeed her very humanity‑-are threatened by Thoas, King of Tauris, who is furious at the impending loss of the High Priestess and the brutalized form of religious rite which she is constrained to serve. He therefore commands that the ship and those on board be destroyed. The issue which has now emerged between the impulsions and affinities of human nature and a perverted religious institution[1] is resolved when Athena appears and commands Thoas to desist from his designs and permit the Greeks to return to their homeland. He accepts his fate, with the rueful expression:
There isn’t even any dignity [καλός]
In challenging a God.[2]
Euripides’ material is drawn from the Homeric legend, and it is in terms of this source that the passage just quoted assumes significance for our discussion. For Homer addressed in poetic form the very question which we are here considering, namely, the value, or worth, of human life and the conditions which are a requisite to the successful and felicitous living of it. He caught hold of the human problem at its root: that the subjective order of human values is somehow tied in with the objective order of material fact. He saw that human life and its value is lived in an objective environmental setting and that, accordingly, man’s essential and perennial task is that of making his life significant in this setting in which he finds himself.
To be sure, Homer gave voice to this human problem in mythological terms. The Homeric world is peopled with demonic forces. It is a world of movement, and chaos and mystery. Against this world appears the figure of man whose reason struggles vigorously to reduce these forces to some kind of order. He brings to this endeavor the conviction that he possesses the requisite qualities of manly excellence (_ρετή) and confidence (θάρσoς) which enable him to overcome the obstacles which confront him and to determine for himself his lot or destiny (μo_ρα). He thus grasps the possibility of achieving the heroic ideal, the conquest of chance or destiny by virtue. Thus the god-like heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey are exceptional and outstanding spirits, who live in proud adventure in the world of their making, their conquest of life tempered only by the ever present fear of death and of the prospect which awaits even an Achilles among the shades.
But the optimism in the Iliad is dampened in the Odyssey. In this latter work Homer’s vision of triumph to be achieved through wit and endurance, the main ingredients of virtue, is replaced by a more conscious and deliberate search for a principle of understanding. This more somber view Homer bequeathed to his successors in the craft of poetic composition: Hesiod, Pindar, and the Athenian dramatists. Pindar, who said of man “tis by means of inborn valour that a man hath mighty power,”[3] nevertheless saw him as bounded by his mortality, which can in nowise be transcended. “Let him not seek to become a God.” Again, “We must seek from the gods for such boons as best befit a mortal mind, knowing what lieth before our feet, and knowing of what estate we are. Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.”[4] He voices in prayer: “I am eager only for that which is within my power.[5] Aeschylus, who discovered the idea of tragedy, makes man turn his supreme virtue, his intelligence, not to adventure and triumph, but to a sorrowful and submissive wisdom:
Zeus, who guided men to think,
who has laid it down that wisdom
comes alone through suffering.
Still there drips in sleep against the heart
grief of memory; against
our pleasure we are temperate.
From the gods who sit in grandeur
grace comes somehow violent.[6]
The mythical and poetic insight into the tension between the worlds of human value and material fact, between the subjective and objective orders, found expression in philosophy. It is true, of course, that pre-Socratic philosophy focused attention upon the objective order. It remained for Socrates, and especially Plato and Aristotle, to consider the order of man and to adjust that order to the objective world. With particular reference to our present topic, these men developed a distinctive theory of society which they believed was required by, and consonant with, that view of human nature.
The Hellenic statement of human nature and dignity, and of the social structure and conditions which are required for the realization of man’s human endowment, is one which employs the metaphysical principle of hierarchy. This notion of hierarchy is, in fact, the key to classical thought, and also to subsequent Christian thought, on this subject. It is, accordingly, a useful principle for the interpretation of two great views of human dignity and society‑-the classical and Christian concepts‑-and, further, for the analysis of contrasting contemporary views which, in their extreme form at least, break from the hierarchical principle.
Plato’s use of the principle of hierarchy is clearly manifest in his analysis of human nature. The highest element, or formality, of the soul is akin to reason. It is, he says, “. . . the best part of the soul. . . .[7] Again, he remarks that it is a “divine quality, a thing that never loses its potency.”[8] He calls it τ_ λoγιστικόσ, the quality which distinguishes man from the brute and elevates him to a higher position in the scale of being and value. It is the immortal element in man which makes him akin to the divine. In sum, man’s rationality is his distinctive excellence and virtue; it is precisely this in which his human dignity consists.
Plato is quite clear as to the further question of the nature of reason. It has two phases, or functions, a cognitive phase and an aspiring phase. This is brought out in the great Phaedrus myth. “We will liken the soul,” Plato says, “to the composite nature of a pair of winged horses and a charioteer.”[9] The wings are attached to the horses and possibly to the charioteer himself. They raise the chariot into the heavens where the divine spectacle becomes visible to the charioteer. They therefore represent the aspiring nature of reason, the eros (_ρως) in man which impels him to unite with the immortal and the divine. The other phase of reason is cognitive (vo_ς). It is represented by the vision of the charioteer. It is, accordingly, the power to discern the broad structure of reality. Just as the charioteer cannot see clearly until the wings have raised him to the supercelestial regions, where the “plain of truth” becomes discernible, so the cognitive reason is in some fundamental sense dependent upon the “erotic” reason. Plato, in other words, is not an unmitigated rationalist who fits the Kierkegaardian description of the person who constructs grandiose speculative systems and all the while lives in a miserable hut.
Plato insists that man’s excellence and dignity lie in reason. But he also recognizes that man is a composite being, that there is a non-rational, as well as rational, element in his nature. In the Phaedrus this non-rational factor is portrayed by two steeds. They are able to pull the chariot around and around on the level, but cannot raise it. One steed is “noble and of noble breed,”[10] and is able to pull the chariot ahead toward a distant goal. The other horse is “quite the opposite in breed and character,”[11] constantly getting out of control in the pursuit of his own inclinations and interests. The noble steed is the spirited element in our irrational nature which causes us to pursue and struggle for goals. This is called θύμας, spirit or will. The ignoble steed is the appetitive element, blind and sensuous desire, which is disinclined toward reason. This is called _πιθυμία, appetite.[12]
The above analysis of the composite nature of the soul means, for Plato, that reason has at least a dual function, a theoretical function and a practical function. Since reason is man’s distinctive endowment and excellence, the exercise of that capacity constitutes the highest virtue. The virtue of wisdom, which has for its object the Idea of the Good, is the supreme virtue. The supreme value of intellectual activity is brought out clearly where Plato speaks of education.
“. . . all this procedure of the arts and sciences . . . indicates their power to lead the best part of the soul up to the contemplation of what is best among realities. . . .[13]
In addition to its aspiring and cognitive functions, reason also has, for Plato, a practical, regulative function. This function is necessary because man is a composite being. Thus reason also has the task of regulating spirit and appetite, bring them under its surveillance. In consequence of the aegis of reason, the entire soul is brought into a condition of harmony and balance. And precisely this harmony and balance, when all phases of man’s nature function in accordance with their value-import, constitutes justice or righteousness (δίκη) in the soul[14]
Precisely the same valuation of human reason is found in the writings of Aristotle. Reason is the glory of man. On its passive level it is merely the latent but unexercised capacity for conceptual thought; but active reason is thought itself, that supreme faculty by which man apprehends truth, i.e., enters the universal realm of relationship, essence, quality, and form. In speaking of the active reason as the divine and immortal in man, Aristotle remarks:
Mind is not intermittent in its activity. Its true nature becomes apparent, however, only when it is separated [from the lower functions], and is revealed as our only deathless and eternal part, without which nothing thinks. But we have no recollection of the activity of mind in a pure state; for when mind is in that state it is not affected by impressions; while conversely, the impressionable side of man is perishable.[15]
As for Plato, so for Aristotle the life of reason constitutes man’s distinctive virtue. The good of anything, Aristotle says, consists in its proper function or performance. “. . . man’s good,” he continues, “would seem to lie in the function of man, if he has one.”[16] And, indeed, he does have a distinctive function, that of the exercise of his reason. “Thus we conclude,” Aristotle states, “that man’s function is an activity of the soul in conformity with, or at any rate involving the use of, ‘rational principle’ (λόγoς).”[17] Since, then, man’s good lies in his function and his function is the exercise of his reason, his good consists in the life of reason. And here the exercise of reason means, first, the regulation of, in the direction of the mean, of man’s natural feelings and dispositions (the appetitive element of the soul), and, finally, the contemplation of truth by the active reason (the rational element of the soul). In fine:
Since it is reason that is most truly man, a life according to reason must be at once best and pleasantest for man. Such a life, therefore, will be the most truly happy.[18]
The classical conception of man’s nature and dignity has implications for society. According to Plato and Aristotle, society is a necessary condition for the realization and expression of man’s nature and potential. His human endowment requires a proper social context in which to come to its measure of fulfillment. And the principle of hierarchy which defines human nature and its value also defines the structure of society.
In the Republic (Πoλιτεία) Plato shows that society has its roots in human need and ability. People have certain needs which can be met by others, and those whose needs are thus met have abilities which supply the needs of others. In receiving from others and in turn giving to them, a rudimentary society is established. Plato’s thesis here is that society is something natural, an interdependence of people specializing according to innate abilities. It is not something “unnatural,” such as a result of arbitrary compact.[19]
Plato goes on to show that men cannot achieve their true humanity in a society where only their basic needs are met. What is further required is a more developed society which is capable of providing refinements of civilization and culture. With opportunity, however, comes increased danger. The complexity and sophistication of a developed society, so necessary to the creation of high culture, can be misused so as to entail unhealthy elements of luxury which frustrate both individual and social excellence. Thus it is necessary to bring reason to bear upon the elements and organization of social life. A worthy society is one which is pervaded by intelligence.[20]
The articulation of men and their activities according to their special aptitudes brings, for Plato, a threefold division to society. Some citizens provide for the material necessities of life, others for the security of the society from internal disturbance and external aggression, and others for the governance of the state according to reason. These groups are called laborers, guardians, and governors. Justice in society occurs when the factors in society function properly and harmoniously.[21]
A somewhat detailed consideration of the structure of a just society and the means by which this is brought about will show the place which reason has in social life. Indeed, the nature and activity of reason, as the locus of human dignity, is clearly revealed in society. The reason in man enables him to know the essential nature of things, to know what each thing is. In connection with the social order, reason enables one to know the nature and function of each element in society. In knowing what each thing is, however, a principle of preferential order, a principle of hierarchy, is implicated. Individual things differ in the degree of reality and value which they possess and express. In apprehending these individuals, man’s reason enables him to assess the elements of society and relate them to each other in a hierarchical scale.
It is the function of the governing, or teaching, element in society to see to it that the other elements in society perform the activities for which they are fitted and to integrate them with each other and the economy of the state. It does this by an understanding, or envisagement, of the common good. The governors, in other words, exercise their intelligence and develop an enlightened program in which the common good can be realized, or in which men together can develop their potential and achieve their humanity. The guardians provide the conditions of stability and security which are requisite for the carrying out of the program. The laborers provide the material conditions of society, in accordance with the enlightened goals of that society. Here Plato’s ideal is that reason and wisdom, which are the distinctive virtues of the governors, shall be shared by all citizens in society. The guardians and laborers are to subordinate themselves under the rule of reason in a concerted action which culminates in the realization of the common good. All phases of society are thus ruled by reason, and certain phases, the guardians and laborers, are assigned places in a hierarchical structure of subordinate functions. In this manner, a just society is procured.
Having emphasized the role of reason in man’s social life, Plato now insists that only a specially qualified type of man is capable of ordering the affairs of society. This is the man who has most fully developed his rational capacities and is thus able to implicate reason in society or to govern the society rationally in accordance with the hierarchical principle. Plato thus remarks:
Unless . . . rulers come to be sufficiently inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy [love of wisdom] meet together, . . . there can be no rest from troubles . . . for states . . . nor all mankind.[22]
It should be pointed out here that Plato saw society as an objective expression of the individual. The elements of the soul‑-appetite, spirit, and reason‑-are, on the analogy of letters, “written up . . . on a bigger scale”[23] in society, thus constituting the division of society in laborers, guardians, and governors. And just as the hierarchical principle requires that reason govern the other phases of the soul, so is it required that governors, who represent reason on a large scale, control the lower orders of society. In this way, then, justice in the state is secured. But it is secured, perhaps, at some considerable expense of freedom.[24]
Plato probably committed in inadvertency when he modeled society along the lines of the individual. The person is a substantive individual; the society is not. It is a collection of individuals and has only a derived and functional individuality. One may, for the purpose at hand, grant Plato’s analysis of the individual and of individual justice as consisting in the rule of reason over the other phases of the soul. But it does not follow, necessarily, that society must be structured in a three-fold way or that in a just society the governors exercise control over the remaining classes at the expense of their freedom. Plato may have seen this difficulty in the analogy between the individual and society, with the result that he later proposed a social theory more consonant with the reciprocal expression of the interests of all the citizenry.[25] In any event, if Plato’s argument in the Republic is questionable in certain respects, what he had in mind is quite clear. He wanted a society organized in accordance with reason, entailing the envisagement of a common good and the hierarchical ordering of the various functions of the society so as to facilitate the realization of that good. Certainly, his ideal is indeed commendable.
As does Plato, Aristotle stresses the continuity between ethics and
politics. Having shown that personal well-being consists in realizing the moral and intellectual virtues, Aristotle then points out that social and political organization is required to help bring these virtues into being.[26] The Politics, then, is concerned with the question of the kind of government and social institutions which can best secure man’s happiness and well-being. In this regard Aristotle remarks:
Every state is as we see a sort of partnership, and every partnership is formed with a view to some good. . . . It is therefore evident that, while all partnerships aim at some good, the partnership that is most supreme of all and includes all of the others does so most of all, and aims at the most supreme of all goods; and this is the partnership entitled the state, the political association.[27]
In line with the entire Ethics, the closing pages of that treatise emphasize that happiness, or well-being, is found in the contemplative life. This life best expresses man’s excellence and dignity as a rational creature. “To contemplate is the noblest of activities; for our reason is the noblest part of us. . . .[28] Since, now, social life is a projection of man’s quest for happiness in the association of persons, it follows that this more comprehensive quest for human good also requires the exercise of intelligence. Thus Aristotle makes it clear, as did Plato before him, that men who embrace the excellence of reason are those who are preeminently qualified, at least ideally, to govern society:
When therefore it comes about that there is either a whole family or even some one individual that differs from the other citizens in virtue so greatly that his virtue exceeds that of all the others, then it is just for this family to be the royal family or this individual king, and sovereign over all matters. . . . for it is not in the order of nature for the part to overtop the whole, but the man that is so exceptionally outstanding has come to overtop the whole community. Hence it only remains for the community to obey such a man, and for him to be sovereign not in turn but absolutely.[29]
Here Aristotle employs the analogy which is found in the Republic that the rule of reason in individual life requires and justifies its rule in society in the form of those embody it preeminently. But, in fairness to Aristotle, it should be pointed out that a monarchy such as the above passage describes is an ideal situation which may not, and normally does not, occur. Aristotle realized this, and accordingly held that the best practicable form of government, compatible with the interests of the citizenry, is a form of democracy under reason and law. Here, too, reason is the virtue of the body politic.
Now the classical thesis that man’s dignity consists in reason and that, in addition to its theoretical use, reason has a practical function in bringing order to individual and social life, is but a part in a larger metaphysical scheme, or view, of reality. Classical metaphysics reads the world as a dualism of the rational and the irrational. For Plato there is being and non-being, Ideas and Matter; for Aristotle, Form and Matter. The concrete world is the result of the imposition of reason upon irrationality, of order upon matter. The rational control of both individual and social life but reflects this general metaphysical situation.
Despite good intentions to the contrary, matter becomes a “second absolute” in classical metaphysics. It is recalcitrant to reason and therefore sets limits to its rational organization. The justice and well-being that are approximately achieved in the individual and the state are precarious and susceptible to destruction by irrational forces and conditions. For example, in the Allegory of the Cave Plato seems at some loss to understand how men are released from a condition of darkness and ignorance to that of light and knowledge. He expresses an amazement that such a “conversion” does occur:
“Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them . . . .”[30]
In the same vein, Plato points up the almost insuperable difficulty in nurturing the philosophic attitude when social conditions are degenerate. And his description of the decline and loss of justice in the state, when the corporate body betrays its sustaining ideal, portrays the recalcitrance of matter, and, indeed, the destructive power of the irrational. Aristotle, too, was aware of the limits of reason when confronted by material conditions. In the closing pages of the Ethics he says:
But the truth is that while theories seem to have power to encourage and stimulate young men of generous minds, and while they may make a finely tempered character, when it is combined with a genuine love of what is noble, more susceptible to the influence of virtue, they are quite powerless to turn the mass of men to goodness and nobility.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As for the goodness that comes by nature, it evidently does not depend on ourselves, but is a result of divine causes which bestow it on certain truly fortunate individuals.[31]
Happiness, for which virtue is indeed a requisite, is nevertheless up against the vicissitudes of a fortune which is beyond the efficacy of reason and intention.
The pernicious dualism of reason and matter contains its own nemesis. To place the prior valuation upon reason–Idea or Form–as the metaphysical principle, and then to confront it with a “second absolute,” a recalcitrant matter which is finally un-amendable to reason, is to leave a highly unsatisfactory situation. To ascribe man’s dignity and worth to his reason and then to leave it prey, finally, to the vicissitudes of matter and
fortune is to qualify that dignity in a very serious manner. If one is inclined to take objection to this conclusion on systematic grounds, he cannot, however, object to it on historical grounds.
The metaphysics of form and matter gave rise to the theory of classical politics. As in that metaphysics there is a measure of the impotence of form when confronted by matter, so in the individual and social life of man there is a pervasive sense of man’s inability rationally to control his experience and to secure his own destiny. Although possessed of the dignity of reason and knowledge, he is haunted by the sense of the futility of both knowledge and effort. This is clearly expressed, for example, by Herodotus, the Greek historian, in what he has to say about the role of mind in the historic process. This role is simply that of a passive spectator, utterly without power to influence the course of events. Self-consciousness thus resolves itself into a consciousness of impotence in the grip of material necessity. “Verily ’tis the sorest of all human ills,” he says, “to abound in knowledge and yet have no power over action.”[32]
The idea of classical politics, with its foundations laid in Greek thought and with its implication of the impotence of reason when confronted by material necessity, found its greatest expression in the idea of Romanitas, the Roman idea of empire and commonwealth.
The idea of Romanitas reflects the Platonic and Aristotelian view that the man of excellence, or virtue, is best qualified to govern the empire and commonwealth. Cicero, who provided philosophical justification for Romanitas in the assumption of power by Augustus Caesar, wrote:
So I spend my time considering the character of the ideal statesman, who is sketched clearly enough, you seem to think, in my books on the Republic. You remember then the standard by which our ideal governor was to weigh his acts. . . . “As a safe voyage is the aim of the pilot, health of the physician, victory of the general, so the ideal statesman will aim at happiness for the citizens of the state to give them material security, copious wealth, wide-reaching distinction and untarnished honour. This, the greatest and finest of human achievements, I want him to perform.”[33]
But in order to insure that the emperor shall fulfill “this, the greatest and finest of human achievements,” Roman thought added an element which is not found, at least so explicitly, in Greek thought. The idea of Romanitas requires that the element of fortune shall be joined with that of virtue in the person of the emperor. Thereby are the blind forces of material necessity subjected to the light of virtue, so that man’s temporal good and well-being are assured both individually and socially. It is thus that the idea of Romanitas reflects the metaphysical dualism of form and matter, and at the same time attempts to heal the split and join them in the idea of classical politics.
But the attempt was destined to failure. The awful burden placed upon the emperor to join in his person the virtue of rational excellence and the element of fortune, so as to secure a temporal destiny for mankind consistent with his dignity and free from the contingent and accidental in historical process, was altogether too heavy to bear. The disruptions of the Roman Empire over a period of centuries, both from within and without, bear witness to this fact. It became increasingly evident to thinking men that both classical politics and the metaphysical dualism of form and matter upon which the former was based were becoming bankrupt and that a new approach was necessary.
That new approach to the problem raised by classical thought and experience was provided by Christianity. The historic exponent of this new view of reality and man is, of course, non other than Augustine. Augustine has a unique place in human thought and human history. He was thoroughly Roman, conversant with the ideas and life-style of antiquity. From one tenet of classical though he never departed, namely, the principle of hierarchy. For Augustine, precisely this principle governs the structure of things, including man and his place, as a creature of dignity, in the world. On the other hand, Augustine was a Christian. It fell to him to interpret Christianity for his own day and time. He employed concepts and thought-patterns which were made available to him primarily from the Greeks. But he often reinterpreted them, so that they might become idioms of the new faith. This reinterpretation includes, among other things, a distinctively new view of human dignity and human society. Standing at the crossroads of the centuries, he thus brought into sharp focus the second major historical concept of the subject which we are here discussing. For this reason, our consideration of the Christian view of man and society will be confined to Augustine’s thought.
Augustine reflects, indeed, the classical heritage when he views man as a duality of soul and body, and further, when he insists that, as regards the former, reason constitutes the excellence and superiority of man. But the values which he assigns to the union of soul and body and to reason bring him in significant contrast with classical thought. For Augustine, the body is not a material surd recalcitrant to the soul and a thing of evil. It is not an alien prison house which the soul would better be rid of. Rather than an instance of matter as a “second absolute,” the body is a creation of God and, while inferior to the soul, is of appreciable value. It is the medium in and through which the life and activity of the soul are expressed, the organ or instrument of the soul. The soul is the life and activity immanent in and expressed through the body. “The soul by its presence gives life to this mortal and earthly body,” Augustine says.[34] The soul is not a distinct entity having some special locus within the body; rather, it exists in all parts of the body. “The soul, however, is present at the same time and entire, not only in the entire mass of its body, but also in each of its individual parts.”[35] That is, the soul and the body are joined, not in a mixture, but as an hypostatic union. The roots of our human nature strike deep into the physical world, but they are not on that account any less spiritual.
For either the soul or the flesh, which are parts of man, can be used for the whole, that is, to mean man. Thus the animal man is not one thing and the carnal another, but both are one and the same, man living according to man.[36]
In this manner Augustine attempted to overcome the extreme dualism in the nature of man which, for classical thought, exalted man’s reason but derogated his body, and thereby precluded the realization of man’s dignity under the material conditions of individual and social experience.
Augustine is also in generic agreement with classical thought when he regards reason and intelligence, the highest level of soul, as the distinctive mark and excellence of man. Indeed, it is the fullest and most perfect expression of organic life, the highest development of terrestrial existence.[37] However, the break with classical philosophy comes at the point of the function and goal of reason. According to classicism, reason has within itself the power to transcend the limits of subjectivity and to apprehend “objective” truth. In the discovery of a dialectic or technique of transcendence, it is to yield science, or, as Augustine says, scientia. Classical reason is thus committed to the ideal of scientific objectivity. But here lies, Augustine continues, the presumption of classical thought. It cannot validate its credentials by virtue of which it presumes to operate.[38] Thus Augustine rejects the pretensions of classical reason and associates himself with the revolt against reason which was typical of Christianity. For him, however, the revolt from reason did not mean a return to the instinctive, nor did it imply that the intellect is radically corrupt. He did not, as did for example Tertullian, abjure thought. “God forbid,” Augustine declares, “that He should hate in us that faculty by which He made us superior to all other living beings.”[39] On the contrary, it meant a radical reinterpretation of the function and goal of reason, namely, insight or wisdom, or sapientia, rather than scientia alone.[40]
In the development of insight, the first step is the awareness of selfhood as a triad of being, intelligence, and purpose. The recognition of these fundamental elements of consciousness is imposed as an inescapable necessity of one’s existe4nce as a rational animal. Consciousness, reduced to its lowest terms, implies in some sense (1) existence, (2) knowledge, and (3) will. To this knowledge Augustine ascribes the character of infallibility, because it is the knowledge of the experient himself. As a direct deliverance of consciousness, it cannot possibly be illusory. In the language of Augustine:
Here are three things I should like men to cogitate upon within themselves. . . . For, I am, and I know, and I will. I am a knowing and willing being; I know that I am and that I will; I will to be and to know.
Let him who can, then, see in these three how inseparable life is, for it is one life, one mind, and one essence–in short, how inseparable is the distinction and yet there is a distinction.[41]
There is, however, in ;the awareness of self an awareness of its limitations. It is limited in its being, as well as in its capacity for knowledge and movement. This sense of limitation and imperfection constitutes, further, a reason, even a necessity, for recognizing god as the arche or principium of one’s being, thought, and purpose. Belief in God is an inner knowledge akin to belief in the self; it is presumed or presupposed in the consciousness of one’s own existence and activity. While this belief is scientifically un-demonstrable, it nevertheless yields a knowledge of the divine Being sufficiently clear and precise for Augustine to say that “next to myself I know God.” God is not known, however, in terms of bodily image. He is not an “object” of sense perception. Further, God is not an “object” of thought to be apprehended in terms of any category of the discursive reason. From this standpoint it becomes possible to understand the paradox: “the very Author of the universe, of whom the soul has no knowledge save to know it knows Him not.”[42] Rather is God apprehended immediately and directly within the interiority of consciousness:
Do not go abroad. Return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth. If you find that you are by nature mutable, transcend yourself. But remember in doing so that you must also transcend yourself even as a reasoning soul. Make for the place where the light of reason is kindled.[43]
Thus the apprehension of God is, for Augustine, the apprehension of the creative principle as pure spirit. Furthermore, the creative principle is apprehended as a single essence, whose nature is fully expressed in its order and activity; in the language of religion, as one God in three hypostases or persons, the Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Spirit uncreated. The first hypostasis, being, is the creative principle properly so called, unknown and unknowable except as self-manifested in the second and third; the second hypostasis is the principle of intelligence, revealed as logos, ratio, or order of the universe; while the third, the hypostasis of spirit, is the principle of motion therein. These hypostases represent internal necessary relations in what is, however, the substantial unity of God. They thus present themselves in a Trinity which may be described as that which IS unchangeably and KNOWS unchangeably and WILLS unchangeably.[44]
In addition to the revaluation of reason with respect to the substitution of sapientia for scientia, Augustine introduces a second consideration. It is that the will, while it can never replace the intellect, has a certain priority over it. In consequence of this priority, the will, as an autonomous determination of the total self, tends to become the ultimate locus of human dignity and excellence, thus furthering the break with classical rationalism. Augustine observes:
There is nothing I perceive so surely and intimately as the fact that I have a will which moves me to find delight in anything. But if this power which enables me to will or not to will is not mine, then I cannot readily find anything to call my own.[45]
The will is in all of these affections; indeed, they are nothing else but inclinations of the will.[46]
The priority of the will is disclosed in the knowledge of what Augustine calls the exterior man, which begins with sense perception and culminates in science. Here the mind does not operate in vacuo; it is moved by desire. Thus sense perception discloses a “unity in trinity” which embraces (a) corpus, the “body” which is seen, (b) anima, the vision of the percipient soul, and (c) voluntas, a conscious and deliberate effort of apprehension uniting the two in a manner so violent that it must be described as desire, passion, or lust (amor, cupiditas, libido).[47] The scientific intelligence, too, reveals its dependence upon the creative principle of will. Scientific reason assumes the data of sense. It then undertakes to discriminate between fact and fancy, by checking the evidence of the senses and inferring therefrom the nature of objects. To do this it applies to this evidence “norms” such as equality, likeness, etc., which, while meaningless except in relation to sense data, are nevertheless not provided from them. As actuated by desire to know, scientific knowledge is not, as for classicism, an end in itself. In distinction to the pretensions of classical science to yield objectively valid knowledge of the eternal, science but yields “cognition of temporal and changeable things”[48] adequate to the conduct of man’s affairs. Its end is mere adjustment. It cannot satisfy man’s appetite for felicity and is, accordingly, dependent upon sapientia as the source of valuations in the light of which alone the sovereign good may be achieved.[49]
The supreme achievement of sapientia, the contemplation and love of God, is also dependent upon will, i.e., upon belief. “Faith, moreover, is to believe that which you do not see, the reward of faith is to see that which you believe.”[50] Such faith, however, is beyond man’s present ability. Augustine, indeed, defines the will as free, as an uncoerced motion of the mind. This is not to suggest, of course, that the will is undetermined. It is merely to insist that its determinations are governed by a principle of inner, rather than outer, control. However, Augustine insists, the definition of will as free applies only to Adam before the fall. The will of the natural man is not free, since its determinations are initiated by his refusal to acknowledge his dependence upon God as the creative and moving principle. From this condition of bad will, the corruption of soul, man requires deliverance by means of what Augustine calls the gift of divine grace. It consists in the actuation of the will by a superior love so that man may believe, and, in consequence of which, he may behold and enjoy God:
. . . he receives the Holy Spirit, whereby there arises in his soul the delight in and the love of God, the supreme and changeless Good. This gift is his here and now, while he walks by faith, not yet by sight: that having his as earnest of God’s free bounty, he may be fired in heart to cleave to his Creator, kindled in mind to come within the shining of the true light. . . .[51]
There is thus in Christian thought, as represented by Augustine, a revaluation of the classical view of human nature and dignity. It results in the denial of the autonomy of reason, placed in an alien body, and of the ideal of scientia as an objective knowledge of eternal being. It seeks for man, on the contrary, an insight or wisdom, sapientia, the conditions of which are moral rather than merely intellectual. If these moral conditions are given to man through divine grace, this does not derogate man or deny him his birthright. It does this, of course, if one insists that man create his own destiny. But that need not, and for Augustine cannot, be insisted upon. On the contrary, man derives from the creator not merely his standards of truth, beauty, and goodness, but also his capacity to transform them into living fact. The very efficacy of salvation implies that the image of God, i.e., the creative and moving principle, has not been effaced from the heart even of unbelievers.[52] And salvation opens up for personality achievements of integration and the release of creative energy through the disclosure of a goal which is supremely intelligible and worthwhile, unknown to classical thought.
Augustine’s final break with classicism is over the question of the societal and historical conditions under which human nature may be realized. His solution to this question involves a rejection of both classical politics and the metaphysical dualism of form and matter upon which the idea of classical politics is based.
Augustine replaces the principle of dualism with the trinitarian principle. According to him, the doctrine of two worlds, the world of form, or archetype, and the world of matter, is nothing else than heresy. It contains within it no creative principle by which order is rendered dynamic in fact and history. It either leaves the chasm between order and process un-bridged or introduces from the outside such fictitious constructions as the world soul. The trinitarian principle, however, Augustine says, resolves this difficulty. He finds the creative and moving principle to be one in essence, the nature of which is fully expressed in its order and activity. In the language of religion it is one God in three persons or hypostases. The first hypostasis is being, the creative principle so-called; the second hypostasis is the principle of intelligence, disclosed as the order of the universe; while the third hypostasis is the principle of motion therein. The world of actuality is not the inexplicable intertwining of two alien worlds of form and matter. Instead, the material world is a creation ex nihilio. It receives from its creative ground its values of being, order, and motion. In its derived being the world is expressive of both order and motion. In sum, Augustine finds a metaphysics of ordered process and, accordingly, a solution of the enigma of classical metaphysics, in the trinitarian principle, which is, for him, something quite more than a feeling in the pit of the stomach. He remarks:
And, now, I understand the Father, in the name of God who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Principle [Beginning] in whom He made them; and, believing as I did that my God is the Trinity, I was seeking It in his holy words, and behold: Thy ‘Spirit moved over the waters.’ Behold it, O my God, the Trinity is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Creator of the whole creation![53]
Classical politics, we have noted, recognizes that human, in the forms of insight and courage, is confronted by an irrational and inexplicable fortune. It therefore united in the person of the sovereign the factors of virtue and fortune, so as to secure for man the realization of his endowment under the conditions of community. We have further seen that the union of virtue and fortune in the person of any human being is an impossibility and that, therefore, creative politics failed to provide a community in which man is delivered from the vicissitudes of fortune or the necessities of history and in which his good and felicity are assured.
Under the aegis of the trinitarian principle, Augustine finds that human life and history embody and express the order and process of divine purpose. In both its individual and historical dimensions, the human experience is not determined, or partly determined, by fortune, is not subject to the intervention of an arbitrary and erratic cosmic force deriving from the side of matter.[54] Thus the human problem is not one of creating a community in which man’s felicity is guaranteed through the union of virtue and fortune in the sovereign, whose task it is to carry the community in his own person. As a matter of fact, the secular community can never accomplish what creative politics required of it, namely, the establishment of the conditions under which man may realize his human endowment. For Augustine, the task of the secular community, insofar as it is legitimate, is to administer the temporal goods of life, the animal right to live and a vast array of secular values. The principle of order upon which the secular community is based is that of self love. It therefore suffers from serious limitations implied by that principle, as possessiveness, exploitation, and conflict. They cannot be overcome in a society whose ideal of concord never rises above that of composing individual interests in relation to the demands of temporal life. Thus the promise of the secular life, to say nothing of the deeper initiatives of the soul, can never be fulfilled in the secular community.[55] What is required, Augustine says, is the substitution of communion for community. A new principle of cohesion must become operative among men. This is none other than the creative and moving principle which trinitarianism brings to view. At the level of individuality the bad will of unregenerate man, according to which he refuses to acknowledge his dependence upon the creative and moving principle, is transformed by divine grace mediated through the Incarnate logos. There results from this transformation the creative expression of the values of personality and the enjoyment of felicity. The adhesion of God becomes, then, the principle of a radically new and different communion, the Society of God. In the divine society the principle of order is the love of God (amor Dei). United in the vision of a Good which is common, comprehensive, inexhaustible, insusceptible of expropriation or monopolization, nothing less indeed than God Himself, men partake of that communion which, unlike the secular society, exists to promote the fullest possible development of individual personality. The unity achieved in the divine society does, however, introduce division and conflict in history. This is the conflict of the two societies, based on two loves, the love of God and the love of self. Just this conflict, rather than the conflict between mankind and dark and ominous physical forces, constitutes the true logic of the saeculum, the hand of God in human history. Even this conflict, however, is not ultimate. In the struggle victory belongs to the city of God. The work of love which it performs brings fulfillment to humanity and signalizes the renewal of the world. History is prophecy: the anticipation of the eschaton in which God, the creative and moving principle, the mediator in the logos incarnate and the lives of the saints, secures the values of creative personality.[56]
It is now clear that the classical and Christian views of man and society, as stated in the thought of important historical representatives, possess both differences and similarities. In regard to the question of human nature and dignity, the differences consist in the antitheses or intellect and volition, reason and faith, science and insight. In regard to the question of the realization of the human endowment, the differences lie in the antitheses of justice as an abstract rational ideal to be embodied in a temporally enacted social order of human achievement and the love of God which redemptively unites men in the eternal communion of the beloved. Yet, in the midst of these significant differences, both classical and Christian though espouse the principle of hierarchy. They read the world as a system embracing a graded scale of being and value, beginning with the ultimate reality and proceeding downward to progressively lower degrees of reality. The existential and value ultimate is, variously, the Good, Reason, or God. Since man carries within him a portion of the divine, or exists in the image of God, he is a creature who possesses distinctive excellence and dignity. And, further, if he conducts his life in accordance with his essential nature, if he projects his dignity into social fact, he then can create and live in a social order which in turn further enhances his human endowment and potential.
Now, it is precisely this notion of hierarchy which, in the main, the modern find difficult to acknowledge. It therefore fails to discern an intrinsic quality in the universe or a comparable excellence in human nature in terms of which either to account for man’s unique dignity or to provide the realization of such dignity in personal and social experience. The negation of the explanatory principle of hierarchy separates the contemporary, predominately secular view of man and society from the older classical and Christian views.
Perhaps it is not an excessive generalization to say that the post-renaissance mentality in western culture has taken as its principle of explanation the genetic principle. The principle requires that things be understood in terms of causal relations. It explains occurrences in terms of their origin in past events and the predictive consequences upon future events. Any event, then, is but a function in a serially ordered stream of causal determination. Put negatively, a genetic logic fails to disclose any ultimate meaning and purpose expressed in and through the particular facts. Rather, they are seen as “value free.”
Modern physical science, emerging from 17th century Europe, is a result of the application of genetic logic to physical nature. The Graeco-Christian thesis had been that nature is a fixed hierarchy of beings which displays reason and purpose. Physical nature manifests the Good, or it subserves the purposes of God. But under the aegis of the genetic principle, physical nature can no longer be looked upon as expressive of an underlying reality or freighted with purpose. It is freed of values and becomes a realm of masses moving in space and time under the influence of definite and dependable forces and in accordance with precise mathematical laws. In both its mathematical and empirical aspects, science consists in the discovery of these forces, which are the causes of all changes in motion, and the deduction and confirmation of demonstrations applying to other motions. Newton admirably stated it when he observed:
For the whole burden of philosophy seems to consist in this‑-from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena. . . .[57]
It was in Darwin’s The Origin of Species that the genetic principle was applied to life. According to Darwin, species are no longer fixed forms, functioning as efficient and final causes of the processes of life. Species themselves are subject to change and evolution, and they evolve, not by predetermined ends, but by natural and mechanical processes. Living beings, then, are not to be understood as evincing permanent structures and ends. Rather, they are to be understood as individuals whose existence and changes are functions of adaptation, selection, and survival in accordance with the evolutionary nisus. Darwin is important, as Professor Dewey remarks, he freed the genetic principle from its application to physical phenomena and applied it to life, thereby opening the way to its further application to mind. “The influence of Darwin upon philosophy,” he says, “resides in his having conquered the phenomena of life for the principle of transition, and thereby freed the new logic for application to mind and morals and life.”[58] This means, then, that man’s mental life and the conventions which mind institutes, including those of society and the body politic, are functions of, and instruments in the service of, the evolutionary nisus. Hence, the genetic principle becomes, for much of contemporary mentality, the paradigm in terms of which to understand human nature and experience and to create the conditions, personal and social, under which man is to find dignity and fulfillment.
In its interest in specifying the relations, largely sequential and causal, which obtain among and rule facts or events, empirical science assumes an atomistic attitude. It tends to isolate the particulars, to determine them precisely, in order better to ascertain the types of relations in which the particulars are implicated. This is precisely the analytic character of science.
Now the question which faces us here concerns the way in which a value-free, analytically oriented attitude characterizes human nature or selfhood, and human experience. What does such an attitude have to say with respect to human dignity, with special regard to its locus and nature? And further, what does this attitude have to say with respect to man’s social experience as commensurate with his human dignity?
Two references may suffice to indicate the manner in which the analytic, descriptive attitude accounts for the human experience of selfhood. The first reference is to the eighteenth century British philosopher, David Hume. Hume propounds his psychology on atomistic and associationist principles. For him the elemental data of experience are discrete, unrelated bits of sensa. These he calls “impressions.” From these elemental sensa, as faint copies of them, are derived the “ideas.” Impressions and ideas then, constitute the content of the mind, and are together called “perceptions.” By a kind of gentle chemistry, the perceptions tend to hang together according to such laws as resemblance, contiguity, and cause-effect. The upshot is that the self or experience of selfhood, is only, and nothing other than, a composition of perceptions. Just as the physical object resolves itself into an association of data, so the self is comparably resolved. We have no knowledge of a self, a core of self-identity, as distinct from our perceptions, and consequently cannot assert its reality. Hume says:
But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exit after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable . . . and consequently there is no such idea.[59]
Further on in the discussion he explicitly states that the self is but an association or composition of perceptions:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything but the perception. . . . If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me.
. . . The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, not identity in different; whatever natural propensions we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity.[60]
The second reference is to the behaviorist or stimulus-response theory of personality, which is a dominant school in contemporary psychology. Professor J. B. Watson had defined personality as a system of original and derived or conditioned reactions or behavior forms. It includes such mechanisms as organismic reflexes, visceral reactions (emotions), manual habits (motor reactions and skills), and laryngeal habits (thinking). Personality is merely a system of responses; it is not a “mental” something called “consciousness.”[61] This same general idea is developed in detail in the contemporary stimulus-response theory of John Dollard and Neal Miller. The individual originally possesses a limited set of behavioral equipment: specific reflexes, innate hierarchies of response, and primary drives. Through the learning process, the original responses are generalized and elaborated to cover new stimulus situations. And new responses are also developed. Personality is precisely this complex of behavior as developed through the mechanisms of stimulus-response.[62]
Theories which define personality as a composition of perceptions or behavior patterns have little, if any, contribution to make to the question of human dignity in either its personal or social reference. It is hard to understand just how qualitative factors of excellence and value, in which human dignity consists, can qualify aggregations of perceptions or reaction mechanisms. It could be said, of course, that systems of perceptions or reactions which are complex are better, more valuable, than simpler such systems. In their discussion of the “higher mental processes,” or “the ‘higher’ type of adjustment,” Dollard and Miller at least tacitly leave this suggestion.[63] But complexity of structure in nowise defines or constitutes value. Hence, the complexity which rules certain organizations of perception or reactions does not in itself confer value or greater value on those systems. For this reason, then, there is nothing in human personality, as a complex organization of value-free occurrences, which can secure to that personality the qualitative dimension of excellence and dignity.
In the personality theories just mentioned, certain data, perceptions or behavior mechanisms, are taken as the primordial constituents of experience. They are then assembled in certain ways so as to create the complex experience of personality and selfhood. This procedure is, as we have seen, in keeping with the procedures of science, according to which events are isolated and viewed atomistically incidental to their association together by means of certain principles. Now this approach to the question of human personality and experience has implications for man’s moral experience. In the first place, society becomes an aggregate of individuals in a manner analogous to the individual as a complex of data. Individuals thus tend to become abstract entities whose meaning and significance consists in their functional role in the social body. They may, on occasion, be manipulated and controlled in order to facilitate the so-called well-being of the social organism. Secondly, the social order is, in turn, a kind of conditioning environment which accounts for the behavior of the individuals who compose the society. This conditioning effect of society and culture upon the individuals can be ascertained through descriptive analyses. Such empirical sciences as psychology, sociology, and anthropology have as their aim precisely this kind of understanding. Society and culture come to mean, for these sciences, a large scale conditioning environment. It is a subject of cognitive concern only in this respect. Dollard and Miller give voice to this matter:
No psychologist would venture to predict the behavior of a rat without knowing on what arm of a T-maze the feed or shock is placed. It is no easier to predict the behavior of a human being without knowing the conditions of his “maze,” i.e., the structure of his social environment. Culture, as conceived by social scientists, is a statement of the design of the human maze, of the type of reward involved, and of what responses are to be awarded. It is in a sense a recipe for learning.[64]
It should be evident that any such purely empirical and behavioral concept of human society and culture is also completely value-free. Cultural and social formations, including their embodiment and expression in institutions, are facts only and possess no valuational character and import. There are, according to the view under discussion, various cultural “mazes,” various rewards given to various responses, various ways in which individuals run these mazes. But there is and can be nothing said about the relative desirability and worth of the cultural and social formations and institutions. Mazes are but mazes, responses are but responses, rewards are but rewards, and runners are but runners. Which mazes or responses or rewards or runners‑-humans or rats‑-are valuationally significant or more significant is, from a thorough going scientific view point, an illegitimate question which cannot be broached.
The inability of the contemporary cultural and social sciences to consider the question of the values of culture and society is not a subject of academic interest only. It is a subject of increasingly profound practical implication. A value-free attitude toward a culture and its institutions cannot, strictly speaking, appraise or judge the qualitative character of cultural reality, either as such or in regard to any of its aspects. This means, then, that questions concerning the value-oriented goals and purposes of a culture lie beyond cognitive purview. We have, in fact, as C. P. Snow has put it, created “two cultures.”[65] We have made advances in science and technology but we are unable adequately to resolve the question as to the uses and purposes to which knowledge should be put. Our mentality is grievously split between an awareness of the results which we can accomplish through science and technology and an awareness of our inability to know which things are worthy of accomplishment and ought to be accomplished. This dichotomy is manifest repeatedly in the formulation of policies and priorities at the political level. Indeed, it is precisely this restriction of knowledge and concern to the empirical description of cultural and social fact, and the consequent inability to consider the questions of cultural and social ideality, that appears to account for much of the present unrest. Among especially the youth, there is an increasing sense that many of our established cultural formations and social institutions either fail to express cherished values or serve outmoded values. When such questions as to the value character of the formations and institutions are raised, with the thought that the substance of cultural and social experience may be calling for new forms of embodiment and expression, it becomes evident that a purely empirical and descriptive approach to human society is unable to provide the necessary understanding and insight.
Throughout these pages we have discussed three major approaches to the subject of human dignity and human society. Two of these views have adopted the metaphysical principle of hierarchy. These view give a privileged position to a factor in reality, Reason or God, and define human dignity, in its personal and social dimensions, in terms of that quality of being. A more contemporary view had adopted a genetic principle of interpretation, with the consequence that man and society as well as physical nature become value-free. Value no longer suffuses and plays over the surface of reality. In his freedom from values and their imperative character, in his thoroughgoing secularist attitude, modern man has in his own way shared the experience of Thoas:
There isn’t even any dignity
In challenging a God.[66]
It is the case, of course, that developments in science and technology have won much for man: the descriptive understanding and control of natural fact and process. But these have been won at a price: the loss of the awareness and envisagement of the sphere of values and the bearing of that sphere upon the world of fact, including man and his culture. Regardless of our wishes, western man cannot turn back to his past. The older idioms in which he expressed his world and experience as value-laden cannot be precisely recaptured. Does this mean, then, that he is destined to view himself and his world, especially hs cultural and social world, as void of qualitative meaning and value? In the concluding pages of this discussion I wish to consider this question and at least indicate the direction in which I believe our thinking should proceed.
An analysis of personhood as a compilation of perceptions or reflexes is and cannot but be an abstraction. From the standpoint of our lived experience, these kind of data are not the primordial, given constituents of our lives and experiences. They are highly abstract artifacts which are derived through processes of objective observation and analysis. Certainly the information which this procedure provides is useful for certain but restricted purposes. But when these data are read back into the subjectivity of personhood‑-the experience of personhood‑-and taken definitively to exhaust the reality of subjectivity, so as to turn subjective into objective abstraction, a wholly illegitimate step has been taken. Whitehead calls it “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.”[67] The fallacy consists in taking an abstraction for a concrete reality. In this instance, the abstractions are perceptual or behavioral data which are substituted for the concrete reality of personhood and the experience of personhood.
The concrete actuality of personal experience, then, is primordial. This fact must, I believe, be taken into account in any consideration of man and his culture, if that consideration is to be concerned with the qualitative dimension of value. It is not, however, very easy to show how personhood is value-constituted or how first person experience implicates value. During the last century, value philosophy has debated this question vigorously. Value theorists who have espoused a thorough going scientific and naturalistic attitude have defined value in terms of interest. Value attaches to objects when an interest is taken in them. A major difficulty with this theory is that if value is defined in terms of interest, it becomes impossible, so it is said, to appraise the interest valuationally. For this, and other reasons, a diametrically opposed view has been developed. This is the view of the value realists, who hold that value is some kind of non-natural entity or essence completely independent of and beyond reality. This theory is faced with the difficulty of showing how these values are sensed by and incorporated in the personality. However one attempts to resolve these problems, value does seem to qualify our experience. firs person experience is valuationally toned in this sense at least: that it is a dynamic self-equilibrating process which sustains a felt satisfaction in the experienced fulfillment of that process. The data of experience are gathered into the unity of the subjective aim of the subject. In this process real and unique self-creative individuality or subjectivity is realized. In precisely this achievement‑-the emergence of the individual to bring the experiential data into a unique unity of subjective focus and intent, and the felt satisfactions which this achievement yields‑-lie the reality and value of human personality. Thus man’s quest for being and dignity is his quest for freely creative self-fulfillment, the advance toward strength of individuality and harmony of subjective aim.
A viable cultural and social order is one which is composed of strong individualities whose quest for achievement and harmony at the individual level is resonant to the demand for the larger harmonies of individuals in the shared experiences of creative communal living. It must be understood that the drive for creative self-fulfillment of the individual requires this shared expericne and its embodiment in institutions. This is one aspect of the relation between individuality and society. There is another equally important aspect. It is that society, in its cultural creations and political institutions, must be responsive to the strong individuality of its members. There is always the temptation on the part of those who are charged with institutional and political responsibilities to regard individuals as abstractions to be managed in the interest of those responsibilities. There is the temptation to define the substance of social experience in terms of the institutional forms, to freeze culture in some forms of its institutional embodiment. There is a real-dialectic at ths point. Thus it is necessary, if a society is to endure and progress, that it respect and work with the real rather than abstract individuality of its membership, and that it be sensitive to the call to modify its institutional forms and practices. Only thus can the larger achievements and harmonies of experience be realized.
In the adjustments which bring free and creative fulfillment to men through the larger harmonies of community, what is essentially needed is an emotionally toned or appreciative awareness of the concrete nature of individuality. The freedom which real individuality yields, the creative self-fulfillment which is its birthright, the conflicts which inevitably cling to particularity, the appetition toward harmony and peace in communal accord‑-these must be brought into our understanding and prized with depth of feeling. This is not an appeal for irrationality. The objective understanding which science yields is important and necessary to the enhancement of the human experience. But it must be suffused with the glow of an emotionally toned appreciation which our own experience of selfhood discloses from its deeply inner resources. This is not an appeal for any one cultural formation or any one set of social institutions as definitive of the order of community. Just as men are unique, so are cultures and societies unique and different. The only appeal which is here suggested is that free and creative individual self-fulfillment with its responsibility and potentiality for peace and harmony in community be appreciated with depth of fervor. It is, in sum, of utmost importance that we recapture the emotional basis of civilization.
Reflection upon our own experience with its appetition for both adventure and harmony may ver well disclose a factor which can bring to us an abiding confidence as we create our personal and social humanity. In our personal and communal life with all of its creative zest and high adventure, there lies the persistent aim for unity and harmony, and harmony of strong and real individuals. The organic and social character of every fact, including the fact of our own experience, is highly indisputable. Likewise, the particularity of our being, the broken and fragmentary character of our experience, is beyond dispute. In this very awareness of our finitude there appears, as a co-implicate of experience, an envisagement of the ultimate fact, the Supreme Individual, into whose unity of subjective aim there are gathered the experiences of finite individuality. Precisely this suggestion, emereging from the depth of our own experience, can very well pervade our appreciations and commitments and bring to contemporary man what he desperately needs, an adequate and effective emotional basis upon which, with his capacity for understanding, he can secure his human dignity and achieve his destiny in the accord of peace.
We have thus been led imperceptibly back to our starting point, the poetic, but significant, wisdom of Euripides. This man, the poet who gave voice to the human tragedy, who saw the sordid in men, who saw a high culture betray its trust, nevertheless in the midst of this bitter realism caught glimpse of an ideal through whose power man may be lured on in his voyage toward his humanity:
O Strength of God, slow art thou and still,
Yet failest never!
On them that worship the Ruthless Will,
On them that dream, doth His judgment wait,
Dreams of the proud man, making great
And greater ever,
Things which are not of God. In wide
And devious coverts, hunter-wise,
He coucheth Time’s unhasting stride,
Following, following, him whose eyes
Look not to Heaven. For all is vain,
The pulse of the heart, the plot of the brain,
That striveth beyond the laws that live.
And is thy faith so hard a thing to see,
That the Spirit of God, whate’er it be,
The Law that abides and changes not, ages long,
The Eternal and Nature-born‑-these things be strong?
What else is wisdom? What of man’s endeavor
Or God’s high grace so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
And shall not loveliness be loved forever?[68]
[1]Euripides Iphegenia in Tauris, tr. Witter Byner (New York: The Modern Library, 1955), 380-92.
[2]Ibid., 1479-80.
[3]Pindar Nemean Odes, tr. Sir. John Sandys (London: William Heinemann, 1924), iii.
[4]Pindar Olympian Odes v; Pythian Odes iii.
[5]Pindar Pythian Odes xi.
[6]Aeschylus Agamemmnon, tr. Richmond Lattimore (New York: The Modern Library, 1952), 176-183
[7]Plato Republic vii, tr. Paul Shorey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 532c.
[8]Ibid., vii. 518e.
[9]Plato Phaedrus, tr. H. N. Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 246a.
[10]Ibid., 246b.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Plato Republic iv. 434d-441c.
[13]Ibid. vii. 532c.
[14]Ibid. iv. 441c-445b.
[15]Aristotle De Anima, tr. Philip Wheelwright (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1935), iii. v.
[16]Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea, tr. Philip Wheelwright (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1935), i. vii.
[17]Ibid.
[18]Ibid., x. vii.
[19]Plato Republic ii. 367e-372a.
[20]Ibid. ii. 372a-374e.
[21]Ibid. iv. 427c-434d.
[22]Ibid. v. 437d.
[23]Ibid. ii. 368d.
[24]Leonard Eslick, “Republic Revisited,” supra, pp. 4 ff.
[25]Ibid., pp. 46 ff.
[26]Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea x. ix.
[27]Aristotel Politica, tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), i. i.
[28]Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea x. vii.
[29]Aristotle Politica iii. xi.
[30]Plato Republic vii. 515c.
[31]Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea x. ix.
[32]Herodotus, tr. George Rawlinson (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1910), ix. 16.
[33]Cicero Ad Atticus, tr. E. O. Winstedt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), viii. xi.
[34]Augustine De Quantitate Animae, tr. J. J. McMahon (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1947), xxxiii. 70.
[35]Augustine De Immortalitate Animae, tr. Ludwig Schopp (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1952), xvi. 29
[36]Augustine De Civitate Dei, tr. G. G. Walsh & G. Monahan (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1952), xiv.4.
[37]Augustine De Libero Arbitro, tr. R. P. Russell (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968), ii. 17. 46.
[38]Augustine De Civitate Dei, tr. G. G. Walsh & D. J. Honan (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1954), xix. 4. 8.
[39]Augustine Epistolas, tr. W. Parsons (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953), 120. 3; Ad Consentium.
[40]Augustine De Trinitate, tr. S. McKenna (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), xii. 15. 25.
[41]Augustine Confessions, tr. V. J. Bourke (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953), xiii. 11.
[42]Augustine De Ordine, tr. R. P. Russell (New York: Cima Publishing Co., Inc., 1948), ii. 18. 47.
[43]Augustine De Vere Religione, tr. J. H. S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 39. 72.
[44]Augustine Confessions xiii; xi. 12; xvi. 19.
[45]Augustine De Libero Arbitrio iii. 1, 3.
[46]Augustine De Civitate Dei xiv. 6.
[47]Augustine De Trinitate xi. 2ff.
[48]Ibid., xii. 12. 17.
[49]See Ibid., x. 6. 10; xii. 2. 2; De Vera Religione 30.
[50]Augustine Sermone 32, in St. Augustine, ed. John A. Mourant (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964), pp. 39-44.
[51]Augustine De Spiritu et Littera, tr. John Burnaby (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1955), v.
[52]Ibid., xxviii.
[53]Augustine Confessions xiii. v. 6. See also De Civitate Dei xi. 10, 24ff; xii. 2. 2-24. For Augustine’s criticism of Plato see Ibid. viii. 5-8; De Vera Religione 4.7; Retractiones, tr. M. J. Bogan (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967), i.
[54]Augustine De Civitate Dei v. 9-11.
[55]Ibid., v. 28; xviii. 2; xix. 4, 13-24; De Libero Arbitrio i. 15. 32.
[56]Augustine De Natura et Gratio, tr. P. Holmes (New York: Random House, 1948), lvii. ff; Epistolas cxxxvii. v. 17; De Civitate Dei x. 32; xv. 22; xviii. 54; xix. 13, 17; xx. 22-4.
[57]Sir Issac Newton, Principia in Issac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World, tr. Andrew Motte, 1729, and Rev. Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), xvii-xviii.
[58]John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1910), pp. 7-8.
[59]David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1888), I, vi, pp. 251-52.
[60]Ibid., pp. 252-53.
[61]J. B. Watson, Behaviorism (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1925), pp. 269-304.
[62]John Dollard and Neal Miller, Personality and Psychotherapy (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., (1950), pp. 25-47.
[63]Ibid., pp. 97-101.
[64]John Dollard and Neal Miller, Social Learning and Imitation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 5-6.
[65]C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 1965.
[66]Supra, p. 1.
[67]A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925), p. 85.
[68]Euripides Bacchae, tr. Gilbert Murray (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1904), 882-901.