Moral Experience

Moral  Experience   Juan José Pérez-Soba Diez del Corral The old hag is nothing! […] Perhaps the old woman was a mistake, but she is not the point. The old woman was only a symptom of my illness. …I wanted to overstep all restrictions as quickly as possible…I killed not a human being but a principle! Yes, I killed a principle, but as for surmounting the barriers, I did not do that; I remained on side here…The only thing I knew how to do was kill!1

Such is the lament of a delirious Rodion Raskolnikov believing that his crime had now been uncovered. The compulsive monologue is a profound reflection of the denial of his action’s authorship which he will not accept but which relentlessly imposes itself upon him. Two weighty sentiments seethe in his interior. On the one hand, there is the vehement desire to remove himself from all culpability so as not to recognize himself as a murderer. The argument that he uses is little less than the ultimate justification which he desperately attempts to express with, “I did not want….”. On the other hand, he laments the failure of his plan, the nonachievement of his goal. The frustration which he feels is so intense that the absurdity of the two presses upon him to crushing point. As in so many of Dostoevsky’s other works, the main character is mercilessly taken to the brink. At that point, he teaches us less through his own reasoning than through the lived paradox which introduces us to man’s fundamental truth. The reality is of such a magnitude that it clashes with preconceived ideas and requires that he overcome them. In Raskolnikov’s case, this is clearer because it directly affects the rupture of his old theory of crime’s justification through the principle of the superman. His idea, fermenting in the unhealthy introspection he lives in, is that the extraordinary man can use the lives of lesser men to attain his goals. To him, this is something which simply happens and needs no justification.2 Now, however, through the course of events, the crime has become a nightmare and has almost completely destroyed the philosophical basis which sustained it. The argument, which he had written about and published, has deserted him. The witness of his action: the axing to death of the old usurer and her sister is much more than his imagination had foreseen, and it separates him from his reason. The “mistake” as he calls it, consequently assumes dramatic value, one which is present by and large in all Dostoevsky’s books. It serves as a guiding ray illuminating a truth previously unknown to him, one which will save him from his crime. It is not in our interest to prolong our analysis of this criminal’s desperate confession without learning from the brilliant teaching it contains. The entire narrative presses upon us with unusual force: arguments do not express the truth of our actions; rather, the experience of action is much greater than “the principles” we use to try to explain them. What dominates Raskolnikov far beyond his reasoning is his seeing himself in what he has become. He wanted to kill a moral principle, namely: respect for an inferior human being based on his personhood. However, what happens is that he becomes a murderer. He wanted to test a theory but in the end it destroys him.

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F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, Part III, Ch. 6, Hamlyn, London 1987, 263-264. Ibid., Part III, Ch. 5., pp 248-251.

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Although he wanted to justify any crime, if needs be, according to greater consequences, he is defeated by his moral experience which presses upon him far more than any theory. The drama which demonstrates this to him is intrinsically tied to his own life and history. 1.  The  Priority  of  moral  experience  over  the  principle   This primary evidence allows us to affirm the priority of moral experience over the formulation of moral principles. The argument which sustains this affirmation is rather uncomplicated: a principle can be called moral to the degree that it is related to moral experience. Furthermore, experience is a point of reference – it contains its own meaning rather than receiving it from accompanying reasons. Being aware of this subordination allows us to determine that the qualification “moral” has its first point of reference in a singular experience,3 prior to any exterior principle. Consequently, it presents us with the specific task of understanding why we call some experiences “moral” in order to be able to then determine the intrinsic dimensions of morality. In the case which we are analyzing, the “death of the principle” which Raskolnikov speaks of, was no more than the transgression of a law as an expression of a moral superiority. What he experiences is not a combination of arguments which confute his theory, but an unexpected and inseparable connection between his person and his action. 4 It is not simply that he has committed a crime but that he is recognized as a criminal. His theory was founded, precisely, on the contrary meaning: according to this, by the application of his learning, he would be able to keep himself detached, as a man superior to his actions, which were to be understood according to their justified a priori in mere consequences. He had made an earlier judgement on his action in which he declared himself innocent, but the action committed was very different from the idea he had formed of it. His true mistake was to make a bigger deal of the interior principle than the reality of the action. His experience, lived dramatically, confronts us with a twofold reality: surmounting consideration of morality as the judgement of the value of our acts; and the need for a specific method of knowledge for the analysis of moral experience. 2.  Morality  does  not  consist,  firstly,  in  a  judgement   We can now appreciate the deficiency of a morality understood from the perspective of a judge or, in Hume’s words, an impartial observer.5 Here the formulation of the judgement demands a norm to which action must be adapted and it becomes a principle of judgement. Morality would then be the science of formulating the most suitable norms for judging man’s actions more precisely and determining which are good and which are bad. The judgement is its central element understood as the application of a norm to action and it could be achieved according to two models: the general method, which would be characteristic of ethical science; or the particular method, which would be reserved to the judgement of conscience.

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Cf. A. RIGOBELLO, Certezza morale ed esperienza religiosa, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 1983; R. DELL’ORO, Esperienza morale e persona. Per una reinterpretatione dell’etica fenomenologica di Dietrich von Hildebrand, Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome 1996. 4 This is the point of departure for all the reflections of: K. WOJTYŁA, Persona y acción, BAC, Madrid 1982 (In English: The Acting Person, Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland 1979); inspired by: M. BLONDEL, La Acción (1893). Ensayo de una crítica de la vida y una ciencia de la práctica, P.I., Ch. 1, BAC, Madrid 1996. In English: Action (1893): Essay on a critique of life and a science of practice, Trans. Oliva Blanchette, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 2007. 5 This is the argument of: G. ABBÀ, Quale impostazione per la filosofia morale? LAS, Rome 1996.

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Having established this framework, the main issue involves the establishment of that norm, which cannot proceed from judgement without becoming a vicious circle; outside of the circle, however, the norm appears to be easily deduced from the nature of things but it is difficult to explain how “having to be” comes from “being”. This explanation has been disqualified and has been called the “error of Naturalism” or the “Law of Hume”. This problem also demands that we consider another that is more fundamental, namely: judging or “being judged”. Is not the perspective of a judge, which secures the objectivity of the judgement, somewhat alien or foreign to the person who acts? Is not “being judged” so rooted in moral judgement, that God is, for us, above all else, the judge of our actions? This method of establishing the norm is problematic. It constrains so as to compel us not only by reason of judgement but also thanks to the presence of an authority and of a judge. Such a perspective makes man dependent on an extraneous authority that judges him; it may be God, the Church or society. It presumes to introduce an intimidating aspect to the moral judgement. This was the manualist method of moral construction which dominated until the second half of the twentieth century. Its basic structure lies in the correlation between law (the objective pole), conscience (subjective pole) and sin (the actual judgement of concrete acts). This structure is still to be overcome in more recent manuals despite attempts at change that have been made since the Council.6 In confronting this rationale with a dynamic analysis of moral acting we cannot but note a real dualism between the conviction of the norm, which appears prior to the action, and the moment of judgement produced in the action itself. We can ascertain a difference of rationality between acceptance of a norm as moral and its application in a particular case. Clearly, it concerns a leap of the moral order, between one stage and another, which is of great importance but which the judgement in itself does not illuminate. I can observe this difference in moral practice between the objective value of what I considered good in itself and the subjective importance of what I considered was good to do. In the end, however, it was determined that there might be a double moral truth: the theory of the norm; and the practice of the reality.7 The truth which is perceived in the judgement is the coincidence of two distinct streams of moral content which are united, but which is very difficult to judge in its turn. The difficulty of attaining equilibrium becomes a question of preference which can be expressed in the following question: What is more important in my action, the objectivity of the law or the achievement of my act? This has been the journey of morality over the last 400 years during which it has been separated from moral experience and focused on judgement.8 The various dualisms contained in such a perspective, 9 which can be resolved in the subjective-objective, person-action pair, reached crisis point in the early years of the twentieth century. This crisis “…from a technical point of view, is nevertheless the extreme crisis of manualism and of its peculiar methodology”.10 We can conclude, then, that a correct foundation of persuasive principles is insufficient for 6

This is demonstrated by: A. BONANDI, “Modelli di teologia morale nel ventesimo secolo”, in Teologia 24 (1999), 91-109; 206-243. 7 Cf. L. MELINA, Moral: entre la crisis y la renovación, EIUNSA, Barcelona 1998, 88. 8 An analysis of the evolution suffered by morality during this period can be found in: S. PINCKAERS, The sources of Christian morality, CUA Press, Washington D.C. 1995. 9 Truth-Freedom; freedom-law; law-conscience; intention-act; act-consequences. Cf. G. DEL POZO ABEJÓN, “La verdad sobre el hombre en su vida moral a la luz de Cristo y de su Espíritu” in Comentarios a la “Veritatis splendor”, BAC, Madrid 1994, 189-229. 10 L. MELINA, J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA, J. NORIEGA, “Tesis y cuestiones acerca del estatuto de la teología moral fundamental”, in La plenitud del obrar cristiano, cit., 17ff.

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guiding the moral life, because a deeper reservoir always remains. Someone can convince me that a norm is reasonable and therefore moral; yet they have not answered a still more fundamental question: Why must I behave morally? This is an elemental question which the law itself cannot resolve. Kant’s complex construction is designed to obviate such a question on the basis of establishing a “rational reflective obligation” which he called “moral autonomy”. It would be the a priori of the structure of my action which would respond to the question to the degree that the reflection suggests, so that acting in any other way would negate reason itself as practical. This response is coherent in its argumentation, but it ignores moral experience. He speaks of “pure practical reason” which needs that “purity” to reach the conditions of possibility of a universal moral judgement.11 However, he neglects the knowledge of morality in experience which he has reduced, with the a priori transcendental method, to mere obligation. He has not overcome the two dualisms mentioned above. These remain a burden on a splendid theoretical construction which does not reach the reality of action, a reality he fundamentally fails to consider. In conclusion, the reduction of moral experience to a judgement requires a response to a fundamental question which affects the moral principle itself: Why do I have to be moral? What judgement can impose on me the morality of my acts?12 In this perspective, reason seeks an unquestionable argument which may be imposed on me as a conviction so that I might accept a primary moral imperative which has to be followed for its own sake. The current moral crisis is directed toward morality in itself, more than toward concrete norms. The difficulty of responding to this question has led, during the course of time, to the flourishing of various cynicisms, which have always considered such a question impossible to answer.13 Consequently, all morality might be reduced to an accumulation of social conventions and good manners which the man who is conscious of such a vacuum could skip. We recognize in this model our theorist, Rodion Raskolnikov, who made the mistake of wanting to prove the reality of his theory; he thought that he was proving to himself that he was a superior being; afterwards, however, he could only despise himself in the most profound way.14 The priority of moral experience over principle indeed reveals something much more profound: the question, “Why do I have to be moral?” is itself immoral. Morality is not an argument, but a dimension of experience. For that reason, the demand for a reason for being moral expresses a prior rejection of this dimension of experience. He who demands to be convinced of his actions’ moral dimension is a man who has already lost his life’s moral orientation. Our fictional character, in wanting to live above morality which he reduced to a judgement through the rupture of the norm, nevertheless finds himself involved in the moral experience which takes possession of him. 11

This is Kant’s true interest in his work: I. KANT, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Preface: “A simple demonstration that pure, practical reason exists, and the entire practical faculty for this end.” 12 Basically, the construction of the “theorem” of the fundamental option, on its Rahnerian side, tries to answer this question by means of the existence of a “transcendental act” directed to the “option for being moral”, which would be the foundation for any other categorical action. Cf. K. DEMMER, “Opción fundamental”, in Nuevo Diccionario de Teología Moral, Ed. San Pablo, Madrid 1992, 1269-1278; A. NELLO FIGA, Teorema de la opción fundamental. Bases para su adecuada utilización en teología moral, Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome 1995. 13 This phrase serves as an example of contemporary cynicism: O. WILDE, Un marido ideal, in Obras completas, Aguilar, Madrid 1958, 541: “You already know, Gertrude, that it is completely indifferent to me that you speak to me of morality. Morality is simply the attitude that we adopt with people for whom we feel a personal antipathy”. 14 As he says himself: F. M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, Part II, Ch. 6, cit., 148-168: “Ah, I am an aesthetic louse, and nothing more!”

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Morality, then, does not consist in the application of principles more or less well suited to the various acts of my life; rather it consists in a light by which I discover a specific dimension of my acts. As MacIntyre emphasized in his book, After Virtue, this suggests a reformulation of the moral question which becomes: “Who am I? Who should I become? What might I do to achieve it?”15 The change is significant because it emphasizes the inseparability of the moral question from the identity of the person who acts. Accordingly, only from the conduct of the person, only in the experience of action is it possible to perceive and to form an authentic moral science. To try and deduce it from other kinds of experiences or to approach it as an element derived from a fundamental anthropology is an improper way of confronting the problem.16 3.  Moral  knowledge   We now come to the second point: the need for a new way of knowing in a real analysis of moral experience. This is a topic which has been developed in various ways by contemporary phenomenology.17 However, all converge in a basic principle: the interrelationship between the subject and the object lived in the experience of knowledge. Starting from this principle, phenomenology has painstakingly sought to determine not only the conditions of possibility of experience, but also the most suitable way of penetrating it for the knowledge it holds, while adapting to the characteristic way it manifests itself to us. In every experience which can be qualified as truly human, its cognitive moment is fundamental. We do not simply live our experiences; it also belongs to us to interpret them. In this sense an intimate bond occurs between experience and interpretation which indicates the way the same experience becomes a directive of life. In Raskolnikov’s case, the problem which his lived moral experience poses for him is that of understanding its meaning. What he experienced was very different from all that constituted his forma mentis and this now makes it very difficult for him to interpret it in a way that would deliver him from his state of perplexity. In every experience, there is an interrelationship between the thing known and the one who knows and this is one of the fundamental conditions of his existence. So a “purely objective” knowledge of experience is not possible; nor can we assert that it is a pure creation of an externally projected subjectivity.18 The first way to overcome this is through the role of affectivity which establishes so-called knowledge “by inclination” or by “connaturality”.19 Here, an affective interrelationship between subject and object is established, based on the initial affective union, and this influences the mode of knowing to the extent that it is based on a primary attraction always present in any behaviour. Only acceptance of this specific mode of knowledge has shown up the 15

Cf. J.F. KEENAN, “Proposing Cardinal Virtues” in Theological Ethics 56 (1995) 711; A. MACINTYRE, After Virtue, 3rd Edition, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 2007. 16 In its methodological aspect, this topic was treated in: J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA DIEZ DEL CORRAL, “Operari sequitur esse?”, in L. MELINA-J. NORIEGA-J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA, La plenitud del obrar cristiano, Ch. 2, cit., 65-83. 17 On this topic, see P. VALORI, L’esperienza morale. Saggio di una fondazione fenomenologica dell’etica, Brescia 1976; P. RICOEUR, A l’école de la phénoménologie, Vrin, Paris 1986. 18 Cf. J. MOUROUX, L’espérience chrétienne. Introduction a une théologie, Aubier Montaigne, Paris 1952; in a directly moral sense: cf. S PRIVITERA, Dall’esperienza alla morale, Il problema “esperienza” in Teologia morale, Edi Oftes, Palermo 1985. 19 Cf. J.M. PERO-SANZ ELORZ, El conocimiento por connaturalidad (La afectividad en la gnoseología tomista), Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona 1964; R.T. CALDERA, Le jugement par inclination chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Vrin, Paris 1980; M. D’AVERNIA, La conoscenza per connaturalità in S. Tommaso d’Aquino, Ed. Studio Domenicano, Bologna 1992.

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marginalization of emotion beginning with a false notion of a freedom of indifference which absolutely objectifies action as something exterior to subjectivity. Emotion moves action, explains its emergence and, therefore, is neither an obstacle to nor an adornment of moral action.20 Connatural knowledge is the foundation of that specific moral knowledge whose characteristic note is that the person who knows is vitally implicated in it. This fact, however, which is characteristic of all experiential knowledge, has specific value in the case of moral experience. In this case it is concerned, not with the experience of a Faktum, but with that of an in fieri, of a becoming. It is not “the event” which is judged: What have I done? Rather, it is the making of oneself in one’s actions: Who am I who has done this?21 It does not end in a statement but an action.22 In the classical languages, this fundamental difference was achieved by the terms: ποιησις and πραξις οr facere and agere.23 This allowed differentiation between aesthetic experience, which terminates in behaviour as an accomplished act and moral experience, which consists in the person’s becoming. Such “becoming” is no mere impression. It is much more. It really consists in what is called action. Action is not a deed but what the person makes of himself in acting. This is what Kierkegaard wanted to emphasize when he centred the difference between the “aesthetic state” and the “ethical state” in the experience he called Anfaegtelse, which could be translated as “anxiety before the threshold of the divine”.24 It reflects that “trembling” of man before the reality weighing upon him, namely, that his very achievement or destruction lies in what he does. It reflects perception of a certain absolute value contained in action which indicates a relationship to the personal value put into play in action rather than the calculation of results. In this way, the Danish thinker wanted to give a convincing solution to every aesthetic proposal which might dissolve that characteristic anxiety of man’s action in a series of human elements considered from the outside. The dramatic aspect of action can only be perceived by the man who acts within the dimensions he discovers in his own experience.25 As Kierkegaard insists well, this implies a relational system in which the human person is not his own ground; indeed, he perceives the lack of such a ground in his behaviour.26

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From a theological point of view: Cf. L. MELINA, “Amor, deseo y acción”, in L. MELINA-J. NORIEGA-J.J. PÉREZSOBA, La plenitud del obrar cristiano, cit., 319-344. 21 Cf. S. PINCKAERS, The Sources of Christian Ethics, cit., 50: “Who am I, who did that? What prompted me from within?” As St Paul says, “I cannot understand my own behaviour. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate” (Rom 7:15). This is the most fundamental moral question.” 22 Cf. M.C. NUSSBAUM, Aristotle’s ‘De Motu Animalium’. Text with Translation, Commentary, and Interpretative Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1978, 186: “Thus, the so-called conclusion is, in practice, not a proposition, but an action.” 23 Cf. ARISTOTLE, Nichomachean Ethics, 1. 6, c. 4 (1140a-1-6). 24 Cf. S. KIERKEGAARD, Temor y temblor, Editorial Nacional, Madrid, 1975, 90, note 11. 25 Moral Science itself has arisen from dramatic literature: cf. M.C. NUSSBAUM, La fragilidad del bien. Fortuna y ética en la tragedia y la filosofía griega, Visor, Madrid, 1995. (in English: The Fragility of the Good. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001). 26 Cf. S. KIERKEGAARD, La malattia mortale, in Opere, Sansoni Editori, Firenze, 1972, 621: “Christian heroism, and this is actually seen very rarely, is to dare to be oneself entirely, that is, to be a unique person, this unique, particular person, only in front of God, only in this immense effort, and in this immense responsibility”.

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In this dimension of experience, freedom is involved from the beginning. No longer is there a merely conscious application of a norm perceived in a particular manner; rather, in the very emerging of moral experience, there is a call to my freedom which allows it to awaken.27 The interpretation of moral experience is inscribed within a movement28 and cannot be reduced to the element of judgement found in it. Additionally, it is understood that the judgement becomes fundamentally incomprehensible to the degree that it is divided from that previous movement which sustains it.29 Here, within the moral experience, the question of meaning becomes evident. It is possible to make a moral decision since moral action searches for meaning.30 This is the primary given, precisely the one that the cynical question denies. Moral meaning is clear in itself; it is not demonstrated by some other meaning. Thus we speak of the existential value of morality. Having arrived at this point, let us now return to our fictitious character who is burdened with anxiety. Incapable of solving its own problems, his reason, trapped in a vicious circle, is devoid of hope. His situation is one of solitude which leads to desperation and the sense of having lost himself. And so he exclaims: “Did I murder the old woman? I killed myself, not that old creature!” “There and then, I murdered myself, in one blow, forever!”31 This is nothing other than the effect of the experience of rupture which sinful experimentation presupposes. Sin is certainly not alien to the core of our moral experience tainting it so that we very often find ourselves groping about in the dark (Acts 17:27), perceiving in experience only fragments of its truth in riddles which we cannot solve. This perception is still incipient starting from the profound interior darkness and is not recognized as such. Raskolnikov had already experienced this in the expression of Lizaveta, his second victim and the sister of the old usurer. The unpredictability of her death and her absolutely defenceless expression accused him of his crime and touched him humanly, which eventually impelled him to seek out Sonia.32 This was Levinas’ basic argument in demonstrating the origin of moral experience to be responsible before the gaze of the one who, defenseless before me, says to me you may not kill me! It concerns an irreducible responsibility for every object-subject relationship, because it is not based on what I may see, but on the subjectivity of the other who sees me and seeks something of me.33

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Cf H.U. VON BALTHASAR, “Las Nueve Tesis”, tesis 7, 1, in Comisión Teológica Internacional, Documentos (1969-1996), BAC, Madrid 1998, 97: “Man, considered outside biblical space, awakens theoretico-practical consciousness of himself thanks to a free and loving call from his neighbour…he also perceives the character of interhuman communion, from which his freedom takes its seal”. 28 This is the main argument of: G. ABBÀ, Lex et virtus. Studi sull’evoluzione della dottrina morale di san Tommaso d’Aquino, LAS, Rome 1983. 29 This implies a reformulation of the meaning of the judgement as shown by: B. GARCEAU, Judicium. Vocabulaire, sources, doctrine de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Vrin, Paris 1968. 30 Cf. G. ANGELINI, “Il senso orientato al sapere”, in G. COLOMBO (Ed.), L’evidenza e la fede, Glossa, Milan 1988, 387-443. 31 F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, Part V, Ch. 4, cit., 402. 32 Cf. Ibid., 393: “he looked at her and suddenly in her face he seemed to see Lizaveta. He vividly recalled Lizaveta’s expression as he advanced upon her with the axe and she retreated before him to the wall, with one hand stretched out and a childlike fear in her face, exactly like that of small children when they suddenly begin to be frightened, stare anxiously at the object of their fear, shrink back and stretch out their little hands, ready to burst into tears”. 33 Cf. E. LÉVINAS, Totalidad e Infinito. Ensayo sobre la exterioridad, Sígueme, Salamanca 1977, 263: “My free will reads its shame in the eyes that gaze at me. It is apologetic, that is, it is now referred, freely, to the judgement of the other which it solicits and which, in this way, does it no harm as a limitation. In this way, it contradicts the idea that every otherness is offensive”.

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Consequently, responsibility, while introducing us to experience, allows us to see the evil of the cynical question closed within its solipsism. It is the intentionally abundant glance of the other which precedes my action and opens me to meaning. Responsibility is born, therefore, of a personal encounter and it discovers in it a moral way. It is knowledge that cannot be gained outside of experience and the encounter itself gives birth to the epiphany of the presence of the other in me. This is the truth which precedes my freedom and which allows it to be guided from within, a presence which initiates affectivity and requires my free receptivity in its awakening. As freedom is awakened, its horizon becomes the other’s freedom. The appearing of the other and being called by him is a way specific to the Infinite One before whom he is absolutely responsible.34 The presence which demands my acceptance and is a call to my freedom is at the same time a new richness. Levinas’ analysis is lacking, precisely on account of an anti-essentialist prejudice: he fails to see in the encounter the promise of a new union. This is because the other is appearing to me, not only as other, but as one who offers me the possibility of an enriched union. He fails to discover communion as an original element contained seminally in the encounter.35 There the other, as promise of communion, is for me a true gift. Behind every encounter there is a leaning toward the other and the discovery of a new unity. Rodion begins to experience this with Sonia the moment he first reveals his crime to her. He does it because he needs someone with whom to unburden and share what is driving him mad in his solitary torment. He explains it in this way: “What I needed were her tears; I wanted to see her terror and watch her heart being torn and tormented! I wanted something, anything, to cling to, any excuse for delay, some human being to look at!”36 He needed to come out of himself but also to feel accepted by another. It was not a sense of responsibility for Sonia which impelled him but the need to feel another as one who would allow him the hope of escape from his solitude. There is a communication with the other in what is specifically human which proceeds from a dynamic of the good and allows one to seize hold of hope. It is impossible to grasp adequately the dimension of gift within the interpersonal structure of moral experience without seeing in it the dynamic of the communication of the good.37 The other is a gift “for me” because I perceive him in a communication of the good which precedes me. Such communication is not a “given” of experience and, for that reason, is difficult to determine; rather, it is the mark of self-giving and explains its dynamism.38 Our true experience is not shaped by data but in the dynamic of self-giving which calls forth our receptivity.39 The primary intention of the other, perceived from his presence, is now opened to an original intention which guides my own intentionality in the same way and continues to allow a specific 34

Cf. E. LÉVINAS, De otro modo que ser, o más allá de la esencia, Sígueme, Salamanca 1987, 185: “The face of the other close up is more than a representation; it is a sign that cannot be represented, it is a way of the Infinite”. 35 Cf. M. NEDONCELLE, «Intersubjectivité d’aprés Martin Buber et Emmanuel Lévinas». In Ibid., Intersubjectivité et ontologie. Le défi personnaliste, Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, Louvain-Paris 1974, 366. 369; G. RÖMPP, “Verantwortung als Obsession? Kritische Anmerkungen zu Levinas’ Philosophie des Subjects”, in Theologie und Philosophie 74 (1999), 527-544. 36 F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, Part VI, Ch. 8, cit., 382. 37 Levinas, instead, always speaks of communication in terms of language and not as an element prior to our conscious awareness united to creation. 38 For that reason: J.L. MARION, Étant donné. Essai d’une phenomenologie de la donation, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1998, 42: “It is not so much that donation belongs to phenomenology, but that phenomenology is wholly revealed by donation”. 39 The division “datum”-“donum” is parallel to that of the “Faktum”-“experiencia”. See the study by: K. L. SCHMITZ, The Gift: Creation, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, 1982.

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union in the communication of certain goods.40 It is not yet possible to speak simply of an opening to an undetermined infinite; it is still the search for a prior, more immediate end than a personal God who sustains a universal communication of the good. It was the intention to avoid the category of the good in moral experience which led to parenthesizing God in moral experience. Indeed, the question of the good is always related to the question of God41 who does not appear as the content of the good experienced without appearing as gift.42 With the appearance of the gift, a new dimension of experience opens to us which now reunites all the elements and allows it to be qualified as moral. It is an experience based on the communication of the good in its truth achieved interpersonally in the intrinsic relationship that exists between presence, encounter and communion.43 In this new dimension of the gift, a specific union between the involvement of the person in his action and the practical rationality which unfolds in the moment of intention is established. Moral experience has guided us by revealing the internal structure of morality in human action and this structure serves a deeper analysis of the experience. This is the hermeneutical circle centred in moral experience. At the same time, it points out a new way to the knowledge of God through an analogy based on the structure of the gift itself. It is based not only on the content given as is the analogy of attribution, but on the fact that it is God who gives it in a dynamic of conversion which includes freedom.44 However, the reality of the interpersonal dimension intrinsic to moral experience does not remain in a structure; at the same time it introduces us to new concrete dimensions united to the communication of the good which we have to understand. 4.  The  revelation  of  love   Recourse to experience must lead us not only to an analysis of content to understand its meaning, but also to the acceptance of its reality as something bigger than ourselves. The category of the encounter as support in another person in a promise of communion presupposes a particular type of personal involvement in such experience. This is to say that there is a moment of faith in every truly moral act. We are not referring here to theological faith but to the surrender to a reality contained in the action which is not in our power, but which lays the foundation of our own capacity of self determination. Here, in the moral experience, we are not concerned with just any faith; it is faith in love, as Saint John exclaims: “We have known and believed in love” (1 John 4:16). The appearance of love is not deductive; we cannot demonstrate its unique value for man, even if it does lead us to an analysis of the affective dynamic proper to action.45 It can only be

40

This is the argument of: A. HAYEN, La communication de l’être d’après S. Thomas d’Aquin: La métaphysique d’un théologien; Desclée de Brouwer, 2 vol., Paris-Louvain 1957. Based on: « bonum communicativum sui », cf. J.P. JOSSUA, «L’axiome «bonum diffusivum sui » chez S. Thomas d’Aquin » in Recherches de Science Religieuse 40 (1966), 127-153. 41 Cf. W. PANNENBERG, Grundlagen der Ethik. Philosophisch-theologische Perspektiven, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, and the discussion held in the Congress: L. MELINA, J. NORIEGA (eds.), Domanda sul bene e domanda su Dio, PUL-Mursia, Rome 1999. 42 Cf. B. HÄRING, Das Heilige und das Gute, Erich Wewel, Freiburg im Breisgau 1950. 43 Cf. J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA DIEZ DEL CORRAL, “Presencia, encuentro y comunión”, in La plenitud del obrar cristiano, cit., 345-377. 44 Cf. A. SCOLA-G. MARENGO-J. PRADES LÓPEZ, Anthropología teológica. La persona humana, Edicep, Valencia, 2003, 58-60. 45 Cf. L. MELINA, “Amor, deseo y acción”, cit., 319-344.

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accepted as the original fact which becomes the interpretative key of all moral experience.46 It is the light that illumines all that we formerly knew only by feeling our way in the dark. Love introduces us into a more extensive communicative dimension which, through the radical opening of experience through its interpersonal dimension, allows for an authentic revelation of the other’s intention in me. The encounter is the revelation, not only of a presence which could remain unknown, but, as love, it is a promise of the intention of the beloved in me which can be qualified as a unitive intention.47 In the experience of human love, being loved has primacy; it introduces me to a history of love which precedes me, from which my own existence springs.48 Morality, as existential fact, owes itself to the very love which it becomes. What the lover makes in the beloved (not a judgement), is the principle of all moral action. Love is born of a primary acceptance49 and is guided to form a communion of persons. This communion seeks more because it requires the gift of self.50 Here is experienced the original good of communion through the irreducible value of reciprocity in the giving and receiving of self. It is the discovery of the final dimension of moral experience in a new meaning of finality. But, at the same time, in the face of a possible lack of reciprocity, love as vulnerability opens us to an anxious dimension. Love is not a mere consolation which can definitively resolve a problem. Love as an original experience introduces us to a moral dynamic full of difficulties which seem overwhelming. For this reason, since not just any love suffices for man, it is necessary that there be revealed to him a love which enables him to encounter a way of salvation. The great problem of starting from moral experience rather than from the strength of a judgement is the weakness which seems to envelop whoever follows this way. Moreover, through faith, which asks for and hands over what it requests, there is also the risk of fragility and abandonment that can seem overwhelming. Taken in itself, the drama of moral experience, involving the person as actor rather than observer, is now raised to an extreme level, even to the point of a genuine tragedy – the losing of oneself!51 In this moment, sin is recognized as the radical denial of proffered love and as the rupture of a communion. He who surrenders to a merely emotional love despairs of it; for him, the promise contained in the first encounter seems tragically empty. The potential fragility of the experience of love and yet one’s own surrender to it is lived with that strength which seems to lead to death. Perhaps the clearest expression of that are the frightening words of Oscar Wilde in the prison at Reading where he writes while contemplating an execution: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by

46

M. NÉDONCELLE, “Letter of 09-11-1959”, in C. VALENZIANO, Introduzione alla filosofia dell’amore di Maurice Nédoncelle, P.U.G., Rome 1965, 108: “What I believed to be an important aspect of experience has become for me an interpretative key. It is the capacity for synthesis and for coherence of principle which has convinced me. In the expositive order, it is necessary to put first what is perhaps placed last in the order of experimental proof”. 47 Studied by: D. VON HILDERBRAND, La esencia del amor, EUNSA, Pamplona 1998. 48 Cf. R. GUARDINI, Amor y luz sobre las parábolas de la primera epístola de San Juan, in Verdad y orden III, Ediciones Guadarrama, Madrid 1960, 83-93. 49 Cf. A.G. VELLA, Love is Acceptance. A Psychological and Theological Investigation of the Mind of St Thomas Aquinas, Maltese Jesuit Province, Valleta, Malta 1969. 50 Cf. R.T. CALDERA, “El don de sí”, in A. Aranda (ed.), Trinidad y Salvación. Estudios sobre la trilogía trinitaria de Juan Pablo II, EUNSA, Pamplona, 1990, 275-287; J. GIL LLORCA, La communio personarum en la “Gratissimam sane” de Juan Pablo II. Elementos para una antropología de la familia, Siquem, Valencia 2000. 51 Cf. R. MAY, Love and Will, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1969.

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each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word; the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!”.52 But that is not Rodion Raskolnikov’s conclusion made, however, in almost absolute desperation. He is dumbfounded by what is for him the unfathomable reality of being loved by Sonia. In the experience of a deathly sadness through which he was able to yield to the young woman, he finds hope in her, in the priority of his love. In this he experiences a love which is not even his own, but the other’s in him. It is enough to sustain him, however, and to prevent him from suicide by which he might have shattered his overwhelming guilt. He comes to this conclusion himself while on the brink of doing away with himself.53 The vulnerability of love itself proceeds from the manner in which the beloved enters into me which, far from being destructive, is the beginning of “being affected” and is a channel of hope.54 Through his deeply rooted vulnerability man is able to surrender to that love which always precedes him and, as moral experience, is related to original love.55 An encounter; the promise of an end; the support of an original love: these elements are united to the revelation of love in moral experience in such a way that, in the overall analysis of such an experience, the correlation of these elements is not arranged by man but is an original and fundamental fact, as Nédoncelle demonstrates in speaking of the content of original experience: “a connection exists, in my eyes, between the person, perception of the other, love and reciprocity”.56 The kind of moral knowledge that we understand to be related to affectivity is revealed to be a specific kind of loving knowledge and it continues to be the fundamental way to know God.57 It is not an easy way. The person can be thrown off balance in three different ways and experience rupture within. Furthermore, in this dimensional experience, he lives through a tension because of the burden of his own sin. This is experienced as a darkness which prevents that intimate unity which he would like to live as a light. 5.  The  encounter  with  Christ   It is here that a unique Person appears within the experience. It is the encounter with Christ, the bearer of an original communion with the Father, the fulfillment of the promises, which renews interiorly the entire moral experience, showing us the original plan which was to dwell in human love as a divine gift. But the privation lay in darkness as did the wherewithal to contemplate one’s own experience and we were impeded from discovering this plan. It is not possible to call Jesus Christ the fullness of moral experience because clearly He is more than an experience and His appearing can never be reduced to a moral meaning. He is, without a doubt, the fullness of the humanum precisely because He leads man beyond himself.

52

O. WILDE, Balada de la cárcel de Reading, in Obras completas, Aguilar, Madrid 1958, 857. In English, cf. The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 53 Cf. F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, Part VI [sic], Ch. 8, cit., 503-504: “Why and for what purpose did I go to her now? I told her I had some business with her, but what business was it? I had no business at all! To announce that I was going? What of that? There’s something to call necessary! Do I love her? No, surely I don’t!” 54 Cf. P.J. WADELL, The Primacy of Love. An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas, Paulist Press, New York 1992, 88-89. 55 Cf. H. ARENDT, El concepto de amor en san Agustín, Ed. Encuentro, Madrid 2001, 71-107. 56 M. NEDONCELLE, Personne humaine et nature. Étude logique et métaphysique, Aubier Montaigne, Paris 1963, 10. 57 For the knowledge of love: M. SCHELER, Liebe und Erkenntnis, Lehnen Verlag, München 1955; M.C. D’ARCY, The Meeting of Love and Knowledge. Perennial Wisdom, George Allen and Unwin, London 1958; M.C. NUSSBAUM, Love’s Knowledge, Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford 1990.

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Indeed, He is the One who, “in the revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully manifests man to himself and reveals to him the sublimity of his vocation” (GS, 22). In the encounter with Christ, a mystery is unveiled: through a gift of the Spirit, man discovers the absolute uniqueness of Christ, Son of God the Father. The experience of the transcendent can reach its highest point when man finds himself with Christ and before his redemptive offering on the Cross.58

It is a manifestation in which Christ takes the initiative. He manifests Himself to each person in very different ways. A special gift is experienced in this encounter which cannot be demanded and, if searched for, is already found since: “no one comes to me unless the Father draws him” (Jn 6:65). It is a novelty which does not sidestep the moral experience but is revealed in its interior, giving it a new dimension.59 It does not appear from outside, as “from a principle”; nor is it alien to man’s heart. Original love and the communication of the good must find themselves in Him; however, merely approaching Him is not enough; it is necessary to feel drawn. It is an “intimate” knowledge in which the new connaturality bestows the Holy Spirit and allows us to enter into “intimacy with God” (1 Cor 2:11). This fact, applied to the beginning of our actions, affects all moral knowing because, as Saint Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). This moral knowledge, born of the Spirit’s presence,60 is a new way of knowing the living God which overcomes every division between faith and morality, faith and life.61 Love as revelation will be the channel through which, in a specific history of love in which God takes the initiative, one comes to recognize the love of the Father, manifested in Christ. The keys of this history: gift, communication, gratuity, plan, liberation and redemption, are concepts whose analogical knowledge requires a delicate, dynamic-moral analysis starting from the original experiences. This allows us to grasp their depth of meaning. The divine knowledge we reach for is united to our acting which now shares in Christ’s own mission. Through it we are introduced to the divine drama of the mission of the Persons. The way is open for an experiential knowledge of the divine Persons beginning with the manner of the mission of each.62 Here it is essential to understand the basic principle taken from Scripture: “to the Son, according to the writings of the philosophers, they gave the name of instrument; to the Spirit, a dwelling: they say, in the Spirit; and through the Son”.63 A fundamental change occurs in the moral dynamism as a result of being introduced to this mystery: “Communion is no longer an end, a task entrusted to the fragile freedom of man, but a firm beginning, the Love of a Father who receives a son in the love of the Son”.64 The gift is not a thing; it is not even a giving of oneself; it is the gift of the original Communion offered us in Christ’s self-giving on the cross.65 Here the definitive response to the 58

L. MELINA, J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA, J. NORIEGA, “Tesis y cuestiones acerca del estatuto de la teología moral fundamental”, in L. MELINA-J. NORIEGA-J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA, La plenitud del obrar cristiano, cit., 20. 59 It renews the entire human dynamism, including that of virtue: cf. L. MELINA, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues. For a renewal of moral theology in the light of Veritatis splendor, CUA Press, Washington DC 2001. 60 For a detailed study of this point, see: J. NORIEGA BASTOS, “Guiados por el Espítitu”. El Espíritu Santo y el conociminto moral en Tomás de Aquino, Mursia, Rome 2000. 61 Cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 43; Vertitatis splendor, n. 88. 62 Cf. E. NAAB, “Experiencia de la gracia, gracia de la experiencia. La misión del Hijo y su conocimiento experiencial según Tomás de Aquino”, in Communio (Spain) 18 (1996) 351-362. 63 ST BASIL OF CAESAREA, De Spiritu Sancto, 4, 6 (SC 17b, 270). 64 J.J. PÉREZ-SOBA DIEZ DEL CORRAL, “Presencia, encuentro y comunión”, cit., 375. 65 Cf. R. TREMBLAY, Radicati e fondati nel Figlio. Contributi per una morale di tipo filiale, Dehonianae, Rome 1997.

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vulnerability of love is found, introducing us to the mystery of redemption which continues to be the principle of communion among men. The new life of Christ is founded on a love which forgives and is born of the essence of God which is His mercy. The encounter with Christ restores the clarity of the divine image in man and overcomes the mist which obscures it. It is the true resurrection which overcomes the death of sin and is united to baptismal conversion as a beginning so as “to walk in newness of life” (Rm 6:4) which is present in every perfect love of man. This is the destination of Raskolnikov’s journey of experience. Starting from the feeling of being loved, he learned to love and, in that communication of love, found salvation, a new life: “Love had raised them from the dead, and the heart of each held endless springs of life for the heart of the other”.66 But his receptivity to the gift was not the end, as Dostoevsky emphatically describes: “He did not even know that the new life would not be his for nothing, that it must be dearly bought and paid for with great and heroic struggles yet to come…”.67 The way is a new one because it is only lived in a new communion. The profoundly human reality of this new life is that in the Church it is lived as a communion on earth. She is the “place of experience”, because in her we encounter that communion which is founded on the unique gift of the Father in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.68 This experience is inseparable from the construction of the Christian moral subject: like a mother, it is part of his birth as a person; like a teacher, it is present in his development. It begins with human communions formed by men but transformed by charity69 and nourished in the Eucharist, the source of communion, “the sacrament of piety, the sign of unity, the bond of charity”.70 6.  Testimony:  the  response  to  experience   The new life introduces us to a new dimension: that of witnessing to the fruitfulness of the gift. The experience of receiving the gift in the encounter with Christ is incomplete in itself and so is united to a promise of increase: “You will see greater things” (Jn 1:50). It involves manifesting in one’s actions the new presence which has given rise to them, the new love in which they increase and the glory for which they prepare us. “In order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father” (Mt 5:16). The experience of renewal has illumined an expansive panorama. The main character of our story does not accompany us to this point, so the author leaves us in anticipation when he says: “But that is the beginning of a new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man…but our present one is ended here”.71 This literary device is similar to the one used at the end of the Gospel of St. John. Having pointed to the gift of faith,72 it presents us, in Peter and John (Jn 21:19-23), with two models of the life of the Church which follows Christ and contemplates 66

F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, cit., 526. Ibid., 527. 68 Cf ST IRENAEUS, Adversus haereses, V, 20, 1 (SC 153, 254): “Furthermore she offers us the vision of the one same faith that is operative in all. All receive the one, same God the Father and give credence to the same economy of the Incarnation of the Son of God; they recognize the same gift of the Spirit; they observe the same precepts and keep the same form in the directives of the Church; they await the same coming of the Lord and hope for the corporal and spiritual salvation of all men.” 69 Cf. ELREDO DE RIEVAL, De spirituale amicitia, l. 1, 70 (CCCM 1, 301): “What flows from charity is without doubt of benefit to friendship, since: Whoever remains in friendship, remains in God, and God remains in Him”. 70 Cf. ST AUGUSTINE, In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus, 26, 13 (CCL 36, 266). 71 F.M. DOSTOEVSKY, Crime and Punishment, “Epilogue”, cit., 527. 72 John 20:31: “These things have been written down so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His name.” 67

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Him.73 We can recognize precisely here the specific manner in which the Church is the “dwelling place of life in Christ”74 and that its life is a testimony. Indeed the beloved disciple “is the disciple who testifies concerning these things” (v. 24). Giving this testimony is the purpose of the Church’s existence: “She lives to witness; moreover, that is how the word which ‘remains’ is fulfilled.”75 She is that living book which explains to us the final hyperbole: “Jesus did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose that not even all the books in the world would be sufficient to contain them” (v. 25). Giving testimony of an experience is the “form” of the Christian life, a form which is nothing but the sharing of a history which the Holy Spirit writes in us with the “finger of God”. This is what the apostles would do after Pentecost: “They do not come down from the mountain carrying, as Moses did, tablets in their hands; rather, they return bearing the Holy Spirit in their hearts …, converted, through His grace, into a living law, a living book”.76

73

Cf. the beautiful commentary of ST AUGUSTINE, In Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus, tr. 124, 5-7 (CCL 36, 683687). 74 Cf. Ibid., 7, l. c., 687: “...and the holy Church, the Spouse of Christ, does all this to be kept safe from those temptations and to be preserved in her happiness.” 75 Cf. R. SCHNACKENBURG, El Evangelio según San Juan, III, Herder, Barcelona 1980, 461. 76 ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, In Matthaeum, hom. 1, 1 (PG 57, 15).

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