Is There a Way Back to Undeniable Reality and Universally Binding Norms?

It is easy to suppose that we think and understand the world in substantially the same way that those who lived in the biblical age did. But in important ways this is not so.

We today tend to “live in our heads” a lot more than did the people living in biblical times and even those who lived up to and including the High Middle Ages and the Scholastic Period. Prior to that time, the “real world” was taken to be largely self-evident. By “real world” I mean not just the physical world but also to a significant degree the metaphysical (literally, “beyond the physical”) world.

For the ancients, the metaphysical world included non-physical (but still real) things such as justice, mercy, love, desire, and truth. It also included the characteristics or qualities by which we group and understand reality (e.g., “green-ness,” or “tree-ness”); these are often called “universals.” There were also more technical categories into which things were grouped such as those of biology: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Other disciplines employed similar categorizations that, while metaphysical, were considered to be real and reliable ways of explaining the world.

In the 13^th and 14^th centuries, a school of thought later called “nominalism” began the move away from this sort of thinking. It proposed that universals did not exist at all but were instead merely constructs of the human mind.

But if these things were merely constructs of the human mind and not somehow rooted in reality, then these man-made constructs could be “un-made.” Thus began the journey away from the “real world,” which led to less and less confidence in our ability to even posit a “real world” out there to which we could refer and take as a given.

Less than 300 years later, Rene Descartes was so despairing that anything definitively existed outside himself that he could only say, “I think therefore I am.” Beyond himself as a thinking and doubting agent, all bets were off. Was there actually anything reliably and objectively real outside his own mind? He couldn’t be sure. What was real and what was merely a construct? Who could say for sure? Such skepticism (which is largely useless for daily life) took a long time to reach the masses of people outside the universities, but today it has. We currently live in a post-nominalist, post-Cartesian, post-Kantian world, deeply infected by Nietzsche’s nihilism.

Yes, welcome to the modern age, in which “reality” is increasingly up for negotiation. Relativism and skepticism reign supreme and we can “rationalize” just about anything in our own little world of one. Everything is just an opinion; something can be true for you but not for me. And we actually congratulate ourselves (as “tolerant” and “open-minded”) for spouting these logical absurdities!

Even we who strive to be faithful Catholics are often imbued with nominalist thinking that often rears its head in casuistry, aspects of “manual theology,” and rationalist thinking and tortured legalism. There is no time here to explain the problematic qualities of these except to say that they amount to an overreaction and seek to solve the problem inside the deeply flawed system they critique. It tends to amount to little more than lipstick on a pig.

How do we find our way back out of the flawed intellectual system to which we are heir? It seems a little like asking an amnesiac to find his own way home.

One way to begin is to realize that human nature has not changed, even if our intellects have suffered. As a moral theologian and pastor, I have found it helpful (in recovering some moral sensibility and common ground) to speak to the universal human longings and inclinations we all share. These are longings and inclinations so basic that they almost go unremarked upon. They are so basic as to be practically undeniable.

St. Thomas Aquinas (drawing from Aristotle) lists five fundamental human inclinations and shows how they form the basis of (morally) good decision making. St. Thomas (and certainly Aristotle) lived before the nominalist divide cast doubts on our ability to know and contact reality as reality. He lived in a time in which people were more confident in their ability to seek the truth, find it, and conform to it. Thus St. Thomas could propose a moral system based on virtue and our common inclination to the good, the true, and the beautiful, rather than rooted in laws and mandates to be obeyed for fear of reprisal. Though sober about human sinfulness, St. Thomas could still confidently appeal (in his pre-nominalist world) to this shared propensity to make progress out of sin through virtue.

So we amnesiacs do well to look to these inclinations that St. Thomas confidently asserts and recognize how universally they still apply today: from the atheist to the most firm believer, from the worst sinner to the most blessed saint. I will list them in today’s post and develop them further tomorrow.

1. The natural inclination to what we see as good
2. The natural inclination to self-preservation
3. The natural inclination to the knowledge of the truth
4. The natural inclination to sexual intimacy and the rearing of offspring
5. The natural inclination to live in society

I realize that in simply listing them here, I may cause many questions and/or doubts to arise in your minds. I will attempt to address these in tomorrow’s post.

Now just because we have an inclination doesn’t mean that we always get it right. While we all share a longing for what we see as good, it does not follow that every apparent good we seek is an actual good. What is evident, however, is that everyone naturally reaches for what he thinks (even if erroneously) is good and not for what he sees as disgusting, loathsome, or harmful. Our natural inclination to the good is not always correct in its aim, but the inclination itself is so universal that it cannot be denied.

This universal inclination is a way out of the individualism, skepticism, and “living in our heads” that is so common today. It is a way back to the universals that must form the basis for recapturing a reality that binds and instructs us all.

I’ll provide more on the particulars tomorrow if you’re brave enough to come back for more!

Disclaimer – I realize that for trained philosophers my layman’s summary of 700 years of intellectual and philosophical trends may cause concern, and it may incite a desire to provide more information and/or to expound upon distinctions I’ve failed to make in this essay. But please remember that I write as a pastor for a general audience, not as a professor addressing graduate students. I want to point to the forest and not get lost in the details of the thousands of trees. At some point too many details obscure the message. Much more can and should be said on the subject (You may say that brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio (when I labor to be brief, I become obscure.)). So please forgive my broad summary. And if you’re still not satisfied, then please write a “readable” book (of fewer than 1000 pages) with the details. 😉

Still There! A Meditation on the Universal Inclination to “the Good”

In yesterday’s post I discussed the overall disconnect from reality effected by nominalism and its successor movements (e.g., Cartesian, Kantian, nihilist). Increasingly we live in our heads and no longer view reality itself as a reliable indicator of what is; we claim a kind of right to determine our own individual notion of reality.

This notion is so widespread today that many don’t even recognize the logical absurdity of such utterances as “Well it may be true for you, but not for me.” Never mind little niceties like the principle of non-contradiction, which says that “A” cannot at the same time be “Not A.” Most moderns are content to claim that they live in their own silo, in their own individual world, in their own head. Increasingly, they do not recognize any debt to a reality “out there” or to their need to make rational claims easily understood by others.

In yesterday’s post I listed the five universal natural inclinations discussed by St. Thomas in both his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics and in various places in the Summa Theologica (e.g., I IIae qq. 6-10, I q. 5 inter al). Here they are again:

1. The natural inclination to what we see as good
2. The natural inclination to self-preservation
3. The natural inclination to the knowledge of the truth
4. The natural inclination to sexual intimacy and the rearing of offspring
5. The natural inclination to live in society

Today I would like to discuss just the first one and leave the others for future posts. Because the ideas of nominalism and its successor movements are lodged very deeply in the minds of many—even pew-sitting, catechism-reading Catholics—the notions on the list may seem to you to be naïve at best and dangerous at worst. Some consider this approach dangerous because it exudes a confidence in our capacity to discover and be inclined to the good and true that some fear is too vague to form the basis for a moral vision.

Because I have written extensively on our human tendency to prefer lies to truth, I pray that you, dear reader, will not accuse me of naiveté. Despite whatever sinful tendencies may cloud our natural inclination to what is good, true, and beautiful, our nature has not changed; we are still wired for the good. We must, in spite of our tendencies to darkness, never forget that we were made for the light and that somewhere under all the layers of denial and sin lies a heart and mind wired for the truth and unhappy with anything less. I might add that the very same Jesus who remarked that many prefer the darkness because their deeds are evil (Jn 3:19) also said that we who are evil know how to give good things to our children (Mat 7:11). Both of these things are collectively true of us.

So again, I would argue that although these inclinations are not lived out perfectly (they are only inclinations) they are hard to completely refute because they are so obviously present in the whole of humanity. As such they form a bridge from the illusion of radical individualism and the “right” to invent our own reality, back to a universal and common understanding of reality. If reality is merely something we “invent” (as our post-nominalist world insists), then how does one account for the existence of such universal human inclinations, which seem to demonstrate a received and common human nature and the existence of goodness and truth “out there” for which we are wired? We must continue to insist on this as a way out of radical individualism and back to a common perception of basic truth.

Let us then press on to the discussion of the first human inclination: The natural inclination to what we see as good.

The principle described and defined – No one is inclined to do what he sees as harmful to himself; we naturally pursue what we consider beneficial. Even when we make sacrifices such as hard work, fasting, or yielding to someone else’s needs, we do so for the sake of some higher goal or good.

So “the good” is not merely that which is immediately pleasurable or preferred. But neither is the good merely that to which we are bound by moral obligation, as if it were wholly separated from happiness or even opposed to it. (I’ll expound further on the morality of the good below.)

Interestingly, St. Thomas did not actually define the good. It is so primordial that it defies description. It is known only as that to which the appetite moves the will (cf 1 Ethics 1). The good is what we desire.

The principle experienced – That people act for what they see as good is a fundamental inclination shared by all. We are attracted to what we perceive will bless or augment us and are averse to things that will curse or harm us. We desire what seems good and are repelled by what seems odious or harmful.

This appetite for the good is so axiomatic that we do it almost without thinking. With very little deliberation, we are almost instantly drawn to basic and necessary goods such as food, shelter, and safety. The same is true for more spiritual things such as what we see as just, true, good, and beautiful. We also, in an almost instinctive sense, seek other perceived goods such as a sense of well-being, honor, respect, and esteem.

This movement toward what is seen as good is universal among human beings. We do well to ask from whence it comes and why it is so universal. It is more than instinct because human beings, unlike animals, will often forgo lower desires for the sake of higher ones. A person may fast for spiritual gain or to be admired for looking thinner. A young man may become a solider and enter a dangerous war in order to be thought brave; he may even forfeit his life to save his friends.

There must be something deeper here than mere physical instinct because many metaphysical goals are often more profound than merely physical ones. For the sake of uncovering new knowledge, new lands, or truth, many have risked life and limb. Some have set sail or voyaged into the very heavens in order to see what is on the other shore or in the skies above. Others have dedicated their whole being to the pursuit of truth and God Himself. This is not only to answer the physical question “What?” but also the more deeply metaphysical question “Why?”

We are intensely drawn to what we see as good. Everyone is wired this way; there are no exceptions.

We do well to ponder this universal inclination to the good (physical and metaphysical) as well as why we all agree on what is good (at least fundamentally). Indeed, beyond the merely physical desires for food, shelter, clothing, and safety (which we all agree are good things to be sought), many metaphysical goods are also universally esteemed. Everyone wants to be treated justly, to be free, to be esteemed, to be respected in basic ways, and to have access to what he sees as beautiful and good. No one wants to be hindered, robbed, treated unjustly, scorned, or mocked. As for social goods, heroism is universally esteemed over cowardice, telling the truth over lying, acting justly over exploiting, earning and sharing over stealing and destroying, honor and trustworthiness over treachery and unreliability. Self-control and personal discipline are esteemed. Personal responsibility and accountability are esteemed while irresponsibility and casting blame are not.

Indeed, writers throughout the centuries (and movies in the modern day) appeal to basic human longings for justice, intimacy, meaning, affirmation, challenge, and belonging to craft books, dramas, and books that appeal to our universal longing and inclination for these things we call “the good.”

We desire these things and are inclined to them even if we do not live them perfectly. They are wired into us in a way that is hard to deny by any truthful admission of our experience as human beings. This is our experience of the universal principle of our inclination to the good.

The principle distinguished – This does not mean that all human desires are lawful or free from evil. It does not mean that whatever we want is morally good. But neither is all that we desire purely egocentric or utterly individualistic. St. Thomas and those before him did not live in the post-nominalist world of radical individualism and thus should not be seen as affirming it at all.

Rather “the good” is what is capable of moving all human beings; it is what all human beings desire. As such, it is distinguished from merely what one or a few people desire. In a pre-nominalist world freer of radical individualism, St. Thomas and others before him could confidently point to “the good” and speak of it as that which all men esteem and can understand (by reason) as good through study, education, perception, and personal experience.

St. Thomas and the ancients were not unaware of the deep difference between real and apparent good. Despite our overall grasp of the good and what constitutes universal appreciation of the good, there are individual assessments of the good that do not coincide with and may even oppose what is truly good. Passions such as anger or lust can cloud individual decisions so that we may reach for what seems apparently good to us in the moment but is not really good for us and/or others in the long term. Such individual choices must be evaluated against better and higher goals to see why they are not only sinful and wrong but are self-defeating (because they substitute apparent good in place of what is truly good).

The principle reiterated – Despite the human tendency to misjudge the good in this way, the fundamental point remains valid: human reason and will are profoundly oriented to the truly good and beautiful; we will never be happy without that. We are wired for the truth. Whatever we do to try to suppress this (e.g., repeated bad choices, rationalizations, or surrounding ourselves with false teachers), ultimately we cannot shake our orientation toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. We are wired for it and cannot silence that small, still voice of God within us saying, “This is the way; walk in it,” whenever we would stray to the right or the left (cf Is 30:21). A thousand misapplications of pursuing the good cannot jettison our deeper desire to lay hold of what we know is truly good. We will either move toward it or else remain sad and angry trying to resist it.

Recovering this crucial insight into our natural inclination is an important milestone on our way out of the radical individualism and skepticism of our day. Because the inclination to the good is so universal it is a first countermeasure against individualism. The individualistic claim of a right to construct a reality that is true for me cannot account for the universal inclination to the good observed everywhere in the human family. Simply put, there are basic goods to which we are all inclined. And this inclination, though not perfectly lived, points inward to a received and common nature, and outward to actual goods out there that are the objects of our inclinations and desires.

I understand that this type of post is heavy reading. I will discuss the other universal inclinations in future posts, but not tomorrow. This sort of stuff is best read in smaller bites with time to digest in between courses!

N.B. I have based some of my post today on reflections made by Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. in his lengthy book The Sources of Christian Ethics (pp. 401-456).

The Natural Inclination to the Knowledge of the Truth

Of all the natural inclinations, our inclination to and desire for the truth is the most doubted today. As we shall see, this, too, is a result of nominalism and the doubts engendered by a post-Cartesian worldview. Many today either doubt that there is a truth to be known, or they believe that even if there are truths to be found they are relative and/or subject to change. The acceptance of immutable, universal truth is often derided.

Never mind that scoffing at the idea of truth and declaring that there is no such thing as immutable and universal truth is itself making a claim to an immutable and universal truth! Thus the “rule” is broken in the very act of announcing and insisting upon it. But philosophical soundness and consistency are not common features of our confused, ideological times.

The principle described and experienced – Nevertheless, and in spite of current struggles, the strong inclination toward and deep desire for truth is demonstrably present in every person.

Each of us comes hard-wired with a longing that seems almost wholly absent in animals. This longing is expressed by the insistent questions we have, ones that are not easily satisfied, questions such as

1. Why? Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are things the way they are? Why?
2. What? What is my life ultimately all about? What is the meaning of things and events? What is the purpose of this or that? What is it like on the moon, or Mars, or out in space? What is over the next hill? What will bring me happiness? What?
3. How? How does this work? How does it relate to other things? How can I get answers? How is this distinct from that? How can I find happiness and completion? How?

Yes, we are insatiably hungry for truth, for answers, for meaning. And we will not be satisfied with pat answers or subterfuge. Indeed, we feel indignant and betrayed if we think or discover that someone is withholding the truth from us, or spinning it somehow, or treating our legitimate quest for real answers as less than deserving of full investigation and solid answers.

It is self-evident that we are wired for truth and seek it, even at great personal cost. We want to know, to discover, to uncover what is new or mysterious. We love to look around, explore, and delight in learning new things. So deep is this longing that we often engage in sinful curiosity, straying into the personal lives of others and insisting on knowing things that we ought not to know or cannot reasonably understand.

As human history shows, this longing for true answers is never fully satisfied. We have never reached the point at which we have even considered saying, “Well, that’s all there is to know; no need to look around anymore or ask any questions. We now know everything and don’t need to look for any more truth.” Indeed, such a scenario is inconceivable. We want to know; each answer generates desire for truth, meaning, and more answers. So we keep looking, deeper, wider, and longer.

The human psyche shouts, “I want to know! I want the complete truth!” And while we might placate ourselves for a while with “technical” truths such as how photosynthesis works, these ultimately will not satisfy us. We want deeper answers and truths that speak to the why of things. Deep truth is what we seek.

Ask an atheist, “Why is there something instead of nothing? Why is there anything at all?” While he may not be willing to accept that God is the answer, he cannot escape the validity of the question because he has the same question. Neither can he escape the gnawing realization that the physical sciences cannot answer metaphysical questions or even pose them.

Yes, we are wired for the truth and will not be satisfied until we have found it. Restlessly, we seek it. Even if we want to resist its demands, we cannot resist it.

The principle distinguished – Sadly, our quest for the truth easily runs into any number of hazards: apparent truth, partial truth masquerading as comprehensive or deeper truth, and the rise of post-nominalist rationalism.

Nominalism has tended to hinder our quest for the truth. As noted in a previous post in this series, nominalism began a process wherein we stepped back from reality and started increasingly to live in our heads. Too often we seek the truth merely in our own thoughts and not enough through the created world which God has given us. In this post-nominalist era, truth is often relegated to the sphere of intellectual abstraction and ideology. Our quest for truth becomes too self-referential. Our bodies—indeed the whole Book of Creation—seem to have less and less to teach us as we step further and further back from reality and into our heads.

And this has brought us to the environment today in which one can look at a person with an obviously male body and think it perfectly “reasonable” for him to say he is actually a female (“trapped” in a male body). This is nothing to “celebrate.” It is not truth. It is a lie. It is a disconnect from reality, as is calling homosexual acts “natural,” or abortion “healthcare.” This sort of thinking amounts to saying that our bodies—indeed all of creation—has nothing to teach us. This is what happens when we step away from reality and look for the truth in our own minds rather than in the creation that is before us and in the revelation of God. Our quest for the truth is shipwrecked in self-referential mind games. St. Paul called the suppression of such obvious truths inexcusable; he said that it leads to our senseless minds becoming darkened and to us being handed over to degradation and base, unnatural behaviors (cf. Rom 1:18-32).

Yes, though wired for the truth, we go dreadfully wrong when we seek to substitute apparent truth and ideology for actual truth; it is like putting water into a gasoline engine. Truth must be found in what really is, not in our thoughts about what is.

The principle reiterated – But this tragic shipwreck of the truth should not be taken to mean that we are not wired for the truth. The confusion caused by sin cannot eclipse our dignity nor the fact that we are summoned to the truth, inclined to it, and will not be happy with anything less than the complete and clear truth.

Our quest for knowledge and the truth exists in spite of our sinful tendencies to ignore it or evade its demands. We instinctively know that it is “out there” to be found. It calls to us, summons us. We are looking for it even when we don’t think that we are. At almost no point during our wakeful hours are we not curious and longing for answers. Evil and error have their days, but the truth will out.

Deep down, people know what they are doing. This is because we are wired for the truth and because God has written His law in our hearts. In our consciences, the voice of God is echoing. God speaks to us there and His voice in creation and revelation resonate at the same pitch. Despite our sinful tendencies to “prefer the darkness to light,” do not ever write a person off as “lost” as long as they are still alive. We should trust the human inclination to truth and remember the active presence of conscience and the help of the Holy Spirit. We should announce the truth to others confidently, realizing that often the loudest protests are merely evidence that we have touched something in their depths and startled them. When you’re getting a lot of flak, you know you’re near the target.

The principle applied – Thus one important path out of nominalism and back to reality is to celebrate the quest for truth and have confidence that because human beings are inclined to the truth—indeed hungry for it—our declaration of it as seen in creation, our bodies, and revelation will have effect. This is so even when the ground seems fallow and sparse of growth (as it does today). The truth will win. It must! We are wired for it.

Even if we traverse down some dark, dead ends, humanity will not be long satisfied with any lie. The inexorable growth and perdurance of the Christian faith (despite attacks, martyrdom, and local and temporal setbacks) testifies to humanity’s inclination toward the truth. Errors come and go, but the truth remains. Error can cause great damage, as we are seeing today in the decaying West. But the truth lives to fight another day, whether or not the West survives. Truth exists because it is built into what God has created; error does not exist because it is the privation of truth. Having no existence of its own, error is doomed to fail. It is like a clear-cut forest; other growth and even trees themselves soon enough return.

Because human nature, wired for the truth, has not changed, neither has our commission to proclaim the truth. I will let St. Paul, who lived in similarly dark times (before the Christian spring), have the last word:

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry….O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith (1 Tim 4:2-5; 6:20-21).

Mankind in 2016: still wired for truth, still inclined to it!