by Prof. Tomás Melendo Granados
Professor of Metaphysics, University of Malaga
We all know well the insistence
with which the latest Popes, particularly Paul VI and John
Paul II, have expressed concern for “the rupture between the
Gospel and culture” being “the drama of our times”. We, then, understand easily the constant thrust
that the current Pontiff has been giving to the “carrying
out of a work of inculturation of the faith, an inculturation
which would reach and transform, through the strength of the
Gospel, the decisive criteria for judgments, for current values,
for lines of thinking and for lifestyle models, so that Christianity
will continue offering, especially to the man of advanced
industrial societies, a meaning and orientation to their existence”.
We are talking about a mission that is perfectly fitted to
Christianity, in the words of Giuseppe Savagnone, since, “paraphrasing
a fundamental principle of Catholic tradition, according to
which grace does not eliminate nature but rather heals it,
empowers it and elevates it above itself, we could say that
grace does not replace culture. On the contrary, it purifies
it of the scums that impede it from adequately reflecting
the identity of man and the world. It frees its most profound
resources and gives value to whatever such a culture contains
which is true, good and beautiful, opening it up to unlimited
outlooks, which not only do not belittle its impulse but exalt
it and intensify it”.
We, therefore, stand before the beneficial influence of the
supernatural over human nature, of which culture is an integral
and unavoidable part. But in these pages, I would like to
focus on the conditions which have to be met by a culture
which purports to place itself effectively at the service
of the faith and of religion. For, it is sufficiently obvious
that not all cultural manifestations enjoy the same vigor
in order to fulfill this task, and neither do the different
philosophies.
Within this context, and setting aside those matters which
seem of greater worth, I shall expose inside my contribution,
with relative breadth, the sense in which Metaphysics establishes
itself as the criterion for measuring the appropriateness
of a culture and as the motivation for raising it to a level
that is properly human. And only later, at the end of the
work, will I attempt to briefly assess whether in the current
state of fallen nature, such a task of exalting purification
can be achieved outside of grace.
1. Culture and “counterculture”
As I have just insinuated, among the many ways in which culture
can be understood nowadays, I intend to retain only its most solid and nuclear
aspect, namely its aspiration towards excellence. We have already referred to those aspects internal
to the subject, as well as to those external elements which
make it possible and to its manifestations in man and his
surroundings. I now consider, along with John Paul II, that
definition which says that something is associated with culture
to the extent that it contributes towards a person’s leading
up to the fullness of his being. Otherwise, that thing’s
qualification as cultural --no matter how much it leaves a
mark in man or how much it comes into contact with him-- will
be the result of an impoverished or a deceitful or a fraudulent
use of the word culture.
As a result of this, the ability to distinguish what ought
to be accepted as "culture" depends on an adequate conception
of the human person. Among the many possible conceptions,
following those suggestions that hark back to
Heraclitus, I deem it most appropriate for our purposes that
which describes him as "metaphysical animal", as "logos"
or a place of being: that is to say, that reality to which
what is real is patently real, insofar as it is real.
And therefore, as someone who is in intimate relation with
the attributes that reality possesses, precisely for being
real, namely, unity, truth, good and beauty. Or better yet,
as a being oriented by vocation towards making present and
incarnating such properties in itself, in such a way that
he grows and perfects himself to the extent that
he gets involved with and lives in the one, the true,
the good and the beautiful, appreciated in their intrinsic
value and elevated to their highest expressions.
Here perhaps we could find, by contrast, the profound key
to some of the distortions and weaknesses that seem to be
in opposition to "what is cultural" in our times. Setting
aside pompous rhetoric and some totalitarian pretensions,
the accusation of the forgetting of being makes up, to my
mind, one of the indicators, which are yet valid, in order
to understand the situation of man in the 21st Century.
For what reasons?
If we were to take a greater interest in the expression and
conception in question rather than in the concrete configuration
which it has in Heidegger, I suggest: (1) that the core of
the inattention to and deprecation of what is real is the
rejection of the demands made by persons, things and institutions
given their very nature (by being what they are), and instead,
attending exclusively to what each one "feels", "thinks",
"desires" or "aspires for" with respect to them; (2) that
such an attitude is tremendously rooted in the current state
of affairs; and (3) the very same deprecation not only endangers
the unity of the universe and that of the human subject
himself --declared by some as nonexistent--, but that the
true-in-itself has come to be replaced by what I
think or opine, by the truth-for-me, for each one; the good
in itself has come to be replaced by "I like", "this
pleases me", "I’m interested in", by what I find agreeable
or pleasurable for me; that authentic beauty, unmistakably
recognizable centuries ago by people of a certain cultural
level, has given way to superficial and subjective aesthetic
appreciations, and even to giving cult to what is ugly, grotesque,
macabre or monstrous.
All in all, and saying it in a complicated way, the hegemonic
role of reality as such --which in the final analysis traces
back to God as inescapable Foundation-- has come to be replaced
by the tyranny of the human conscience, by subjectivity;
by a capricious and arbitrary "I": an "I" which is "ametaphysical"
or "beingless", we could say. What is important has come to
be, not so much what I am or do or have
but that each one of those things has become "I" or turns
out to be "mine".
All this has resulted naturally, if not in a substantial modification,
in a
profound change in the intimate core and in the perfective
display of those
who conform our world, at times producing manifestations that
we can call "countercultural". For if, using anew a classic
terminology, man is defined as "onto-logical" reality --"shepherd
of being", Heidegger calls him and Karol Wojtyla reminded
us in one of his first speeches as Pope--, the darkening and
the putting in parentheses of such a being, with the concomitant
disdain of metaphysics, which are characteristic of the recent
centuries, must have adversely affected him in his most intimate
core.
In a way, such break crystallizes in a profound lack of
unity, a break between human behavior
and his guiding principles, which usually is accompanied by
a deep sense of frustration and sometimes by dangerous ruptures
in personality. Consequently, I believe that the building
up and consolidation of the unity of the human subject
in those areas which mainly forge his condition as person
--theoretical, ethical, and aesthetic, not taken in isolation
but in their enriching reciprocal integration—makes up the
most direct objective par excellence of those who aspire to
elevate the "cultural" tone --human tone!-- of the world of
today. And in order to reach such objective, it is imperative
that the integrative task to which I have just referred be
flanked by the concomitant task of revitalizing those properties
with whose contact man becomes more human: truth, good, beauty,
as presented to us by those traditional metaphysical sciences.
In this consists, in substance, "doing culture".
2. Truth mistreated
Let us first take a look at the theoretical sphere. Really,
the relativist crisis of the truth constitutes one of the
most devastating scourges of our times. Or even perhaps the
most pernicious of all, for we see ourselves to some
extent at the root of the rest of them. As Fides et Ratio
explains, at present we find a widespread conviction
that our intellect is incapable of reaching, by itself, the
certainty of those fundamental truths about human existence.
We do not at all refer to a random affirmation, with disregard
for daily life. In my conversations with students, colleagues
and friends, it is easy to find such statements as: "Reason?
OK, agreed. But, which reason? Yours, or mine? Is there only
one reason? or two, or three... or as many as there are individuals?
How can I tell if what I know is also what the others know?
Doesn"t each one have his own particular view of reality,
valid for himself, but different in any case from that of
everyone else?"
I stress that perhaps we stand before theproblem,
or at least before one of the foremost problems of
contemporary man. In any case, this is one of the most serious
difficulties that arise when the moment comes to make our
compatriots understand exactly. For example, that
there do exist ways of living that are in accord with our
constitutive condition (and therefore engender perfection
and happiness) and others that are not so (and therefore lead
necessarily to insatisfaction and personal ruin). Only with
difficulty, just to put paradigmatic examples, will they admit
sincerely and without debating --or, rather, will they effectively
understand, with deep intelligent persuasion, capable of translating
to long-lasting works—that indissoluble marriage, a friendship
which is selfless and unrelenting, and a well-done and silent
work are just a few of those conditions that exalt the human
being; while extra-marital or contra-marital relations, homosexuality,
the use of contraceptives, the unlimited search for pleasure,
utility,
success or money, competitiveness at any cost, the closing
in on oneself, and other realities of this type, are associated
by nature with the second group and contribute to
unmaking man and woman... even though these are voluntarily
chosen (because things decided on freely aspire to imposing
themselves today as an "argument" capable of legitimizing
everything).
Along with more profound causes which the Roman Pontiff himself
and other
scholars have pointed out, such breakdown has also been fostered
by a growing proliferation of practices which, day after day,
erode the sense of truth in those who may have possessed
it previously... or which have made it impossible to exist
in the rest of men. I list some situations (the list is not
in any order or not meant to be exhaustive): (i) the
absence of distinction between reality and fiction, such as
are offered above all in the media and notably aggravated
by the progressive and indiscriminate multiplication of virtual
realities; (ii) excessive essayism, in which
the truth, even if it plays a certain role, is treated with
tremendous subjective thoughtlessness; (iii)
a lack of differentiation between what is capable of true
knowledge and that which, by its very nature, will remain
always within the realm of what is debatable; (iv)
abundance of debates in which differing opinions present themselves
to be at the same level and like indiscernible; (v)
presenting unverified data as certain or as facts, which many
times turn out to be falsehoods...without proportionate effort
on the part of their creators or propagators to correct misinformation
or to restore the truth; (vi) the impossibility
of distinguishing those who are competent in a specific matter
from those who are not; (vii) the proliferation
of surveys which deify the supremacy of "data" and in which
any person --as Kierkegaard would denounce-- is required to
express his/her opinion, whether or not s/he has command over
the matter in question.
It is not difficult to realize, on the other hand, the extent
to which many of these tendencies have taken shape in the
western centers of education. As I have explained on other
occasions, the official structuring and practice of our educational
tasks, at the most basic levels as well as at the university
level, have not always helped the young people to discover
and incorporate to their basic convictions the idea that the
role of education is to make shine forth in him what is
human, and that what usually happens is they are limited
to being enabled to carry out certain functions in the economic
and labor aspects of society which unfortunately have lost
the awareness that their constituents are, before anything
else and at all occasions, persons. So that, obviously, makes
enormously difficult the development of culture --conceived
as personal exertion en route to perfection.
3. Good kept secret
The attitude of our contemporaries with regard to the good,
freedom, happiness and ways of conceiving their self-fulfillment
can likewise be studied from the “countercultural” and anti-metaphysical
glasses of relativism, focusing it on aspects that are intimately
interconnected: the indiscriminate exaltation of the “me”,
and the capricious reign of one’s own desires.
a) Egoism. According to the Augustinian doctrine
of the "two cities", one can argue that, throughout his existence,
every human being finds himself impelled to undertake a basic
choice between a pair of points: i)reality
or being, on the one hand; and ii)me,
at the opposite end. As I have been insinuating, our civilization
seems to have opted for the second, for the "I". We see this
all over: from the "egoism" that reigns in most of the relations
between North and South or, if you like, between multinationals
or developed countries on the one hand, and the third or fourth
world, on the other; to the numberless advertisements or television
spots which invite us to give in to some whim or caprice,
to think of our own well-being, to make us realize that we
"deserve" this or that pleasure, etc.
The consequences of this polarization that we see all around
us threaten to reach universal dimensions. For instance, there
are now many people who are unable to conceive of something
as good if it weren"t to give them –each one of them in particular--
some benefit. We are not talking about persons who, in
practice, put their very own benefits before the common
good or before that of the others, but about people who do
not even know or understand the sense in which something can
be called good and can effectively be so, if it didn’t come
accompanied by some satisfaction for them (many times, something
material). It so happens that, out of the three types of good
which the classics distinguished --the honest or worthy good,
the pleasurable good, and the useful good--, the first, which
is the most valuable, seems to have disappeared from the scene:
one no longer understands how a thing could be good in
itself..., as for example of Thomas More’s death, which
didn’t give the saint any advantage according to current beliefs,
or the dome of St. Peter at the Vatican, which many of modern
trends would be inclined to substitute with a simple roof.
As regards things which are intrinsically and autonomously
good, these and other realities like them turn out nowadays
opaque to our knowledge; a majority of our contemporaries
are only able to perceive the good for me, i.e. what
each one finds useful or agreeable.
In this respect, we understand the reason for today"s widespread
inability to conceive a person as being capable of selfless
actions, seeking only the good of the others. I have checked
it many times, on attempting to explain that happiness derives
from true forgetfulness of oneself in order to attend exclusively
to the good of the other. It is symptomatic that a high proportion
of those who listen to such doctrine simply consider impossible
that someone could work without thinking of his personal benefit:
“at bottom --they would assert obstinately, turning the issues
around-- they act that way because they feel OK that way”.
Such statements obviously eliminate completely whatever objective
criterion to discern good and bad, enclosing the subject in
the relativeness of his “I”.
b) The tyranny of desires. Such relativism
reaches a very dangerous height when it opens up to the theoretical
repudiation of human nature: in the attempt to think that
there does not exist any stable manner of being proper
to man. But this is exactly what happens today in many
places. At present, not only do people deny a similarity in
nature for the representatives of humanity in the various
periods of history or in the various places and civilizations,
but even for the members of a given community or ethnic group.
Some people say that, definitely, each individual
possesses a particular and proper configuration... and this
is not even fixed, but can change little by little and be
defined anew according to the circumstances and the interests
of each moment.
The consequence is pretty clear and devastating. For centuries,
ethics has sustained itself within the whole of the natural
inclinations of the human subject, among which the giving
of self to others has been gaining preponderance, since it
lies at the very root of the person"s essence. These tendencies
would determine his duties and limitations, indicating to
him the path towards his perfection. Today, with nature having
disappeared, there have also been eliminated those universal
and permanent indicators, leaving desire to be the
only point of reference. Even self-fulfillment, which is so
in vogue, has come to be conceived substantially as giving
way to such desires, outside of the sign that they possess...
knowing that they cannot have any such sign since they cannot
find any canon for establishing their category or their legitimacy.
Hence, the extraordinary primacy given to collecting experiences
of all types (preferably “aesthetic-sentimental”): all enjoy
the same value, since there is no discrimination between what
is in accord with man"s essence and that which is not. From
the same point of view, neither man nor woman possesses a
guiding star, a goal towards which they
must head: to live is to live, to feel! ...and that’s
enough.
In the case of many young people, this disorientation is intensified
for two reasons: (1)The lack of clear
models throughout practically the entire educational
process, since those who ought to propose them –in the heart
of the family or the educational institution-- no longer dare
to be such, deceived by a false idea of freedom or by an ingenuous
or comfortable fear of meddling in the lives of those girls
and boys, of traumatizing them, or of making mistakes. (2)The
absence of self-knowledge. A large part of today"s youth,
and a not-so-small part of adults as well, lack the tools
necessary for knowing themselves interiorly, since they have
not learnt to identify which are their emotions,
which their impulses or appetites, etc. Why? Traditionally,
this self-mastery was carried out, above all, through literature.
Thanks to it, the reader anticipated his own life: “s/he felt
in love” 50 times before s/he fell in love in real life; on
other occasions, he would experience the fear of being revealed
or the anxiety in the face of imminent danger, doubt at the
moment of deciding, the desire of “flying higher”, shame and
anguish or remorse because of an evil committed... Today’s
points of reference in order to understand the human being
are those presented on television and the other means of mass
communication: based on the profile of characters that these
offer, a broad multiculturalism has had a vigorous influence,
as well as the opportunity that the programs have to adapt
themselves to all levels of understanding, reasons that derive
in turn from the need to capture audiences and, with them,
prestige, publicity and economic benefits. The result is a
most rudimentary product: the feelings of those new heroes
and protagonists are reduced practically to sexual attraction,
ambition for power and domination, desire for revenge, uncontrolled
interest in success... and little more, with all that exposed
in their turn to a primitive, syncopated, and brusque form,
lacking in important details... even coming from the very
cartoons.
Consequently, without the minimum of unavoidable instruments
for exploring their soul and for being cultivated, the young
person --and even the adult of today-- appears before his
very self as a great unknown. Disoriented, without a guiding
star to mark out the path towards his fullness, he has become
incapable of discerning that which, in the sense that A. Machado
gives to it, will make out of him or her a good man or woman.
He finds himself condemned to accumulating unconnected experiences,
which he doesn"t know whether they build him or destroy him...
since many times he does not even have a clear awareness that
the freedom given him has been given for his own building
up and self-directing towards his perfection as a person:
perhaps because --with the being of his vital horizons having
disappeared-- he has also lost all awareness that that possible
perfection exists. All this, despite whatever they sometimes
want us to believe, seems sufficiently unable to engender
authentic and positive em>culture.
4. Beauty “subjectivized”
The statement “there’s no accounting for taste”, which may
be valid in certain spheres, has acquired a practically universal
--and even rather aggressive-- value, and has come to be applied
to the entire field of beauty, understood in its turn in a
very impoverished sense, in a sense that is almost exclusively
sensible and even only artificial or man-made... which is
exactly where the beautiful, because of its "lesser" category
or "ontological density", turns out more difficult to distinguish
from that which is not. This is a phenomenon to which hardly
any importance has been given, since it has been treated as
a question of likes, of times, of trends..., but influences
a great deal the formation or, at times, the absence of formation
in younger persons... and in everybody.
In what sense? (i) following Mouroux’ appreciations,
I think that [beauty and] art, under whichever form, is an
essential need for man: it influences him enormously and it
introduces serious problems to modern society;(ii) I likewise opine that, just
like for discovering truth and for loving and procuring the
good, in order to appreciate beauty, a continual effort
is necessary, tending towards the acquisition of the conglomeration
of habits, which are connatural with what is beautiful.
Thanks to them, the person who cultivates them finds himself
growing in what we know to be good taste, measure, refinement
in dealings with persons and things, distinction, modesty,
reserve, elegance, composure in the most diverse situations,
etc. (iii) And eventually I’m afraid that,
since that kind of interior formation is imparted on rather
rare occasions, a good part of what is being offered today
to our equals as “art” and “culture” makes them unable to
appreciate the genuine and deeper value of reality
or, if you like, unready for the contemplative joy in beauties
of a rank higher than what they are often exposed to, and
capable of enriching, in a sovereign way, their humanity,
which is many times maltreated or deteriorating.
The deep-seated idea here has been graphically expressed by
Inger Enkvist: “people who don"t fill their gray matter --the
Swedish specialist affirms-- are “empty”. They do not possess
the necessary cultural heritage which they ought to have in
order to be able to use it; ...neither are they able to seek
pleasant experiences, for example through art, since art also
demands learning and training... The only thing they can enjoy
is the set of experiences that create ecstasy, for example
drugs, since it is the only kind of distraction not requiring
any form of prior discipline or mastery.”
The foregoing, given the results it evokes and to which it
points, admits lots of commentaries. It would be sufficient
to point out the following: (1) On the one
hand, the unfocused getting accustomed, on the part of many
of our fellowmen, to a bombardment of impressions, frequently
heart-rending, in all the areas of our sensibility: from the
monotonous chewing of gum or distracting one"s tongue with
more or less exotic foods or drinks, all the way to the alternating
of deafening sounds, images and changing of lights during
those moments of recreation... or even in those attempted
moments of work, all the way to the exposure to strong sensations
--the liking for what is terrifying, violent or macabre--,
which temporarily awaken and activate their emotionalism;
and (2) on the other hand, the extent to
which that coming together of incitements, which come to be
indispensable, contributes to making their intellects lethargic
and, as a consequence, to an almost endemic boredom of so
many people within and outside of the school and Cork environment:
a tedium which, as philosophers like Kierkegaard
or Camus and psychiatrists like Frankl would comment, constitutes
one of the most devastating plagues of our present world and
one of the key elements for understanding those apparently
intelligible actions of some of our contemporaries and for
explaining the absence of authentic growth –of cultural
development-- in a good number of them.
5. Metaphysics and faith: in favor of authentic culture
a) Immersion in reality. Now that we"ve come
to this point, and after seeing what we"ve seen, I don"t believe
I exaggerate when I affirm that in order to counteract these
counter-cultural elements to which I have just referred, it
is necessary to exert effort in nurturing in our fellowmen,
from their most tender years, their strict condition as
persons. And neither should it be surprising that I define
this task as a deep and progressive recovery of being;
as a salutary immersion in reality,
united around the three poles already mentioned and which
in the last analysis are equivalent: truth, good, and beauty,
uncovered and welcomed with all the vigor that is proper to
them. “Satiate with reality”: there we find summarized the
entire work of formation of any person. And that is, consequently,
what we ought to make clear now: this is the most effective
way to put the human being in fruitful and unified contact
with the true, the good and the beautiful, in all the areas
and at all levels in which these are made manifest.
In other places, I have developed rather extensively such
manner of proceeding, as a response to the deficiencies I
have pointed out a little while earlier. Please hold me excused,
because here and now, given the lack of time to explain them,
I will have to limit myself to sketching the matter lightly,
in line with two warnings I consider fundamental. The first
one is that, if we truly want to sustain a committed immersion
in what is real as I have been alluding to, each one of us
ought to struggle and exert every effort, with personal
doggedness and seriousness, above all to discover unity
deeply and to discover the ineffable real
marvels of the universe: to acquire a vivid awareness
of the fact that everything that is --more or less intense
and unitary reflection of God One and Triune-- precisely
delights by virtue of its truth, captivates
by virtue of its goodness, fascinates by
virtue of its beauty. And it is necessary
to appreciate Him with convenced depth and learn how to contaminate
others with the same conviction utilizing our most vibrant
vital fibers, losing none of such wonders: none. All this
implies, as I suggested at the start, a notable effort at
going deep into reality and a similar effort at integrating
the goals thus achieved. Both efforts definitely have to leave
their mark in our very manner of working and of relating with
our fellow creatures, towards a greater and more solid unity
of life.
It is necessary, for example, for the recovery of that “passion
for the truth” to which John Paul II motivates us, for each
one of us to go deep in the experience of knowing,
as a privileged means of discovering the meaning of one"s
existence and the function of the universe, and a means of
getting introduced to reality and being nourished by reality.
Since the implicit or express conviction that the world
cannot be known is practically the same as behaving as if
the world did not exist, but as if it existed only to the
extent that I could relate with it and only from this does
it have meaning and consistency. This in turn leads us
to be alone and isolated and out-of-context, and thus impoverishes
the universe and deprives it of value, reducing it to its
relationship with me, to a “for my ego’s prothesis”... with
all the sterile and frustrating effects that such isolation
gives rise to.
To avoid this risk and to personally live through the
experience of the truth, and also to help others carry
out the truth to its last consequences, it becomes indispensable,
in the first place, to adopt an adequate outlook, that is
to say, to understand and live our intellectual formation
–task which we never consider finished-- as a unified
knowledge of reality, and not simply
as an unconnected study of materials: as a learning of a series
of “subjects”, which would constitute an isolated and fragmented
preserve in our lives, shut away in a kind of parallel existence
--the center of formation--, which only with difficulty can
attract a modern-day person, accustomed as he is to living
in the street and living in the media.
I refer specifically to those of us who in one way or another
dedicate or will dedicate part of our efforts to forming others:
I am fully convinced that only when we get to transmit what
we know as news about the magnificence of the world and
of ourselves and not mere "subjects", I repeat, can we
awaken in girls and boys the meaning of and inclination
toward what is real, indispensable in order for their
lives to have any weight and to not remain at the absolute
mercy of the movable comings and goings of desires and of
the shallow but nevertheless persistent invitations of our
environment.
With regard to the good: the indispensable objective for the
youngsters and the less young to reach perfection and to reach
their fullness consists in putting them in conditions of appreciating
and wishing the good in itself and, consequently,
the good for another as such, overcoming the well-rooted
tendency nowadays to pursue, in an almost exclusive manner,
one"s own benefit and pleasure (good for me)... which
imprisons the human subject in the very narrow molds of his
subjectivity.
As Cardona argues: "educating, forming honest men, nice persons
[...] That is: teaching and helping the child and the adolescent
to forget themselves and their appetitive tendencies, so that
they give of themselves generously to the others. Helping
them to come out of their animal stage of pure “needs” (real
or unreal), and move on to their spiritual stage of “freedom”,
of elective love, responding in that way to the primordial
precept of all natural ethical law: love God above all things
with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself".
Moving towards that goal, the modeling of honest persons --and
not of mere elements in the workforce and elements of social
life who act for their own benefit-- will have to consciously
be geared towards an entire development in the centers of
formation. And in order to achieve this, in order for the
youth of today to discover the wonders of his condition as
person and to discover that the only acceptable behavior leading
towards that goal is to open himself up lovingly towards others
--including in the exercise of his professional work, when
he is making his acquired knowledge bear fruit--: it would
be good to make them reflect on what follows, which comes
from one of the most notable Masters in humanity in Western
history: Thomas Aquinas.
According to this author: there exist two fundamental types
of operations: one, that through which one seeks one’s own
completion or mere preservation; and the second, more noble,
that which expressly attends to another’s good. The
first kind, continues the Angelic Doctor, is proper to imperfect
agents; the second one, proper to those which already possess
some fullness. In colloquial terms --although charged with
biblical resonances--, this can be summed up in the third
and well-known expression: it is more perfect to give
than to receive. Therefore, the more elevated a reality
finds itself in the hierarchy of beings, the closer its operations
get to pure gift, that is to say, to love: the most sublime
of all activities.
Obviously, those trends that predominate in the modern-day
civilized world do not go along this line. What has come to
be known as consumerism --the tendency to limit to purely
commercial aspects even the highest manifestations of the
spirit, including education and culture-- conceives of and
obtains happiness by means of acquisitive operations and repetitive
use-destruction operations which are found infinitely beneath
male’s and female’s dignity and, as a consequence, make them
unable to progress and experience the true joy that such development
brings with it.
It would be good, therefore, to go deep in these foregoing
ideas and transmit them with strength and attractiveness to
those whom we want to help, avoiding to the extent possible
their being carried away by the dynamism of consumerism...which
always brings about a profound personal frustration. As Ballesteros
affirms: “hedonism, since it is opposed to the control of
one’s instincts, denies the qualitative difference between
man and beast”, impeding thus that perfection which is properly
human and which arises from the search for sublime ideals.
In order to carry out this exalting task, that famous affirmation
of Gaudium et Spes can serve as a guide: “The human
being, the only creature on earth that God has willed for
its own sake, cannot find his fullness except in
the sincere gift of self to the others”. In this, according to John Paul II’s own words,
“is summed up all of Christian anthropology:
the theory and praxis founded on the Gospels”. And it is this, therefore, that ought to characterize
and orient the entire educational task in all and in each
one of its details.
Thus, when time comes to explain to every human being his
own greatness and the sure path which will lead him to perfection,
it would be good to make clear --in accordance with the demands
of an ethics anchored on Metaphysics-- that we are speaking
here of loving the others disinterestedly and selflessly.
We would like to insist, nevertheless, that such altruism
does not in the least imply the rejection of one’s own improvement
and satisfaction. We can and, in fact, we should procure our
happiness: for this is, after all, a natural inclination which,
at this level of our nature, we cannot reject. But precisely
in order to achieve that happiness, what we should never do,
in the reflexive and free ambit of elective love, is to transform
it into an explicit and obsessive object of our every action
and thought. We neither pursue it at whatever cost nor repudiate
it: rather, we ought to direct all our
free capacity for loving towards the good
of the others, in such a way that no space
remains for ourselves. By virtue of human excellence,
this is the only thing, I think, capable of perfecting us
as persons and of procuring for us a stable and lasting happiness.
As Tolstoy would say: "in the sentiment called love is to
be found the single thing capable of resolving all the contradictions
of our existence and of giving man that total joy whose achievement
is the end of our lives". And the key anthropological contradiction
is that a person, who is called by his very greatness to give
himself to the others, becomes impoverished and destroyed
by thinking only about himself. Hence, love --on opening us
to the others-- introduces joy into our lives.
Eventually, it is necessary to personally possess, and transmit
to those we desire to form, the conviction that, when
the beautiful is understood as it ought to be, then the education
for capturing it is summed up in and elevates all
our human potencies and leads them to the summit, leading
the soul towards God. It cannot, therefore, be despised;
rather, there has to be the contact with what is beautiful,
for as long as it is conceived correctly, along with the conglomeration
of harmonious effects it encompasses.
All this means that beauty –with peculiar nuances en each
case-- accompanies the totality of everything that exists,
from the most insignificant of realities all the way to God
Himself. Likewise, that which is beautiful is not some
kind of "decoration" added on and external to beings, by virtue
of which they are resplendent, but rather the culmination
of all and each one of their most characteristic perfections:
of their transcendental properties, as they are called in
metaphysics. Concretely, “beauty, properly understood,
ought to be contemplated along with the truth and the good
[...]. For a given form to be beautiful, as opposed to being
merely pretty, it needs to be associated with such other values
as truth or honesty. These two values of beauty and truth
are distinct, although fundamentally inseparable. Both form
a unity like water and earth forming clay [...]. All forms
of art make reference to the truth: the truth of the sight,
of our hearing, of the spirit. True beauty is inseparable
from the search for truth. When there"s an attempt to create
something beautiful separated from the truth, the result is
sentimentalism”.
The same thing has to be affirmed, as the citation above also
says, with respect to good (and to unity, although this is
not cited explicitly). Unfortunately, however, among the greatest
yet least mentioned lacks that there are in today"s world
is the lack of ability to preserve the fullness of beauty
--which should be, at one and the same time, one, true and
good--, replaced frequently by superficial manifestations
of what has come to be known as simply "cute", or reduced
drastically to a cult of what is ugly or grotesque, which
imperceptibly may bring us to the "father of lies". We find
ourselves before a not-so-insignificant aspect of the dangerous
fragmentation of the contemporary person in his contact with
the universe and with the rest of the constituents of the
human species: something which, as we have been saying and
which has been clearly developed by Carlos Cardona, makes
up one of the most extensive and alarming shortages of present-day
education and formation, with impressive and deleterious repercussions
for the lives of our fellowmen. A similar personal decomposition
--probably the most profound defect which contemporary education
is guilty of-- makes us feel its consequences in the field
of beauty.
Harries explains it thus: “One of the most unfortunate characteristics
of the modern world is the break among thought, feeling, and
morality. Oftentimes, people think of beauty only in terms
of emotional response. People are used to thinking that conscience
is a feeling of culpability, while the thought in its pure
state is reserved for science. In contrast to this separated
interpretation of sentiment, thought and morality, our Christian
ancestors kept a unitary vision in which the mental processes
always had a role to play and beauty was an aspect of objective
reality” and, consequently, something on which to lean
at the moment of increasing, along with the esteem of the
world which surrounds it, the growth which every human being
ought to experience upon contact with the universe.
b) Empowered by grace. "Our Christian forebears...",
Harries would say, and I emphasize it intentionally. Perhaps
that is where the mystery lies for overcoming certain merely
formal, fragmentary and at times rather bureaucratic approaches
about contemporary inculturation; the secret for
putting ourselves and putting those around us in conditions
of growing personally, realizing, appreciating,
and enjoying in full the splendor of existent beings, upon
having learnt all the treasures that they encompass within.
I would dare affirm that nothing of the above is doable without
the influence of the faith and of grace. I wouldn"t be on
strong foundations making such a belief without mentioning
three "interlinked" signs in its defense: 1) The first, of
universal nature, takes note of the fracture introduced into
human nature by original sin and personal errors. 2) The second,
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