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1 A HOLISTIC VALUES EDUCATION: EMOTIONALITY, RATIONALITY AND MEANING

Roger Burggraeve (Prof. Moral Theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium)

This contribution, presented by an ethicist, a philosopher and a theologian, has no pretensions to situate itself on the practical and applied level of religious education in (public) schools, but intends to reflect more fundamentally on the relationship between education and values in general, as basis for religious education. Indeed, those who are concerned with moral and religious education cannot ignore the question on the educational conditions that make possible this ‘values’ education (where ‘values’ is understood here both in an ethical as well as in a religious sense). This contribution intends to lay open three fundamental conditions for a holistic moral and religious education, and this according to the triptych of emotionality, rationality and meaning. For some illustrations of this three-dimensional values education, we will refer to the world and the experience of adolescents in a Western-European context, because of my educational work with 15-18 years old youngsters in a national youth formation centre in Brussels (Belgium). Likewise, the sequence of the three fundamental dimensions is not arbitrary: the primary foundation for a holistic values education, after all, is emotionality as an experience of belongingness in security and participation, whereby both the confrontation with what is ‘reasonable’ and ethically responsible, as well as the integration in a sustaining perspective of meaning is embedded and made possible. We will discover how reason and meaning imply also their own specific dimensions of emotionality, among others the ‘heteronomous ethical affection by the vulnerable face of the other’, implying the ‘bodily emotionality’ of the moral subject, and religion as the expressive confession of an associating and sensitive, that means a relational and emotionally involved God. This last affirmation immediately makes clear that the dimension of meaning will be elaborated in a religious, and more specifically in a Christian perspective, because it is my existential background. It would be personally inauthentic and philosophically untenable to base my approach of meaning, and even of the other two dimensions, on a formal, external and neutral comparatism, that means on a so-called objective description of and impartial comparison between different philosophical and religious visions, movements and confessions. Our point of departure and our approach can only be particular, namely rooted in the Christian, or even more precise in the Catholic particularity I belong to. This “religion from within” (Ricoeur)1 does not exclude an open mind for other convictions, visions and professions. This openness and dialogue however is impossible without the permanent engagement to make our own religious convictions and expressions reflectively communicable for ourselves (within the community) and for others, namely for other communities and for other persons taking another way of life. To be reciprocal, and thus to be an authentic dialogue, we have also to be open for the visions of other philosophical convictions and religious communities. Therefore I hope that my particular Christian (Catholic) point of view will give to thought, to exchange and to share, in respect for and recognition of each other’s otherness, without avoiding a real discussion because too

1 P. RICOEUR, Critique and conviction. Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, Cambridge, 1998, p. 169. 2 respectful for the difference as a kind of final value.

I. EMOTIONALITY AND REASSURING PARTICIPATION

No single education, thus also no single values education – all education is in essence values education, also religious education – begins with a transfer of values on a cognitive and discursive level. What comes before that is the need for an emotional being rooted. Therefore we start with our exploration of moral and religious values education with this emotional ‘rootedness’.

Emotional embedment creates the necessary ‘potential space’ for education

Using the words of the American psychologist, Winnicott,2 we can call the emotional embedment of education the necessary ‘potential space’. Education is in the first place creating a ‘milieu’ of safety, ambience, security, conviviality, and familiarity so that young people can feel at home in themselves and with one another. Since they ‘leave their father and mother’ when they strive for emotional maturity, in the emotional insecurity and vulnerability they end up in they need a new ‘nest’, a new ‘maternal womb’ that offers them security, a new emotional safety net that would catch them if they fall. It’s clear that this emotional environment and communion not just represents an instrumental value, namely functional for something else outside the life of communion, but realises an intrinsic and expressive value, meaningful for itself. Therefore this expressive community life has rather to be characterised as a covenant, because it transcends a contractual relationship, based on a reciprocal and intentional agreement of autonomous and free individuals involved. In a covenantal community people do not seal an agreement of convenience; they recognise instead the bond of ‘we’ already existing. In a covenant the ‘we’ precedes the singular and plural ‘ego’s’. We are associated with each other as our bother’s keeper, and through this solidarity we are inspired to take care of each other. It is important to profile the experience of covenant as a valuable model and context for education, because today the model of contract has gradually prevailed for the last two centuries.3 For all the initiatives of moral and religious education, this implies that much attention must be paid to group formation and the creation of an amiable ‘welcoming’ atmosphere, so that young people can feel at home and ‘be able to recover one’s breathing space’. Young people have no need for a ‘great’, abstract love, but the presence of people who create an atmosphere of cordial, sensitive, real but yet prudent affection. This felt affection takes place not only in an amiable atmosphere but also through cordial forms of expression. Therefore, it is not only about good-willed and good-intentioned love, but also about an emotionally permeated and expressive love that can be experienced. Young people must ‘feel’ that they are welcome and are allowed to belong as they are, with their own story and experiences. This can be, should be and must be expressed in a manner wherein the spaces where people come together are furnished and decorated, and radiate cosiness and comfort. For educators, this means that they should not only love young people, but that they must also let them feel and experience this. Young people should be able to try and taste this, among others by cordial relations and through the interest of the educator in what interests them. This involvement creates a commonality that is felt-through, which both in itself – as an emotional experience – is valuable as well as forms the fundamental condition for any moral and

2 D.W. WINNICOTT, Playing and Reality, London, 1971. 3 A. CORTINA, Covenant and contract. Politics, ethics and religion, Leuven/Dudley, 2003, pp. 3-24. 3 religious values communication.

A ‘good enough mother’

Our argument for emotionality as the basis for values education is, however, not without risks. In psycho-analytical terms, this means the return to the mother or the ‘maternal pole’, with the risk of the relapse in the fusion, i.e. in the reductive melting, whereby the distinction and the difference between ‘mother’ and ‘child’, between educator or group and young people, are lost with all the pernicious consequences of dependence and infantilism thereof. That is why Winnicott rightly argues for a ‘good enough mother’, meaning to say for a good mother who is but relatively and not totally good. Neither the educational milieu, nor the group nor the educator should be a ‘perfect mother’. Then would everything run perfectly, then would there only be complete reciprocity, commonality and involvement, without frustrations, shortcomings and crises. Such a perfect, ‘rounded’ encompassing is linked for example to the desires of growing young people themselves, who have just separated and emancipated themselves from the emotional entanglement at home. Nonetheless, even though in their emotional chaos - sociologist Ulrich Beck speaks about ‘the completely normal chaos of love’.4 - they need a ‘surrogate mother’, this should not be a mere ‘duplicate’ of their first ‘mother’, i.e. of their former ‘maternal milieu’ that nurtured them. They need a milieu and ‘guides’ that give them a new sense of security, which, however, does not suppress and suffocate them. Their new ‘environment’ and ‘those who surround them’ should thus avoid all affective obtrusiveness. Young people need an emotional bond that preserves the necessary distance and creates space for their growth towards an emotional autonomy. In their growth toward adulthood, i.e. toward personal identity and responsible self- determination, young people detach themselves from the original belongingness in which, up to that point, they lived and felt secure. Gradually – at times unremarkably, at other times brusquely – they begin to experience the belongingness of the original relational and social networks of relations, family and neighbourhood as an entrapment or imprisonment. In order to become themselves, they must break free, emancipate themselves. And this does not happen without a struggle. The young person is like a crustacean that must rid itself of its original, protective shell, which has become too small and thus became a prison, in order to be able to grow further and to unfold itself in its full stature. At the time of birth, the child is separated from its mother by the severance of the umbilical cord, but more drastically still by the permanent detachment from the mother’s placenta. The latter provided the infant before its birth with all that it needed for its survival and at the same time filtered out various dangerous substances that circulated in the maternal blood. The period of youth is like a second birth that takes place gradually. In order to become an adult, young people must leave step by step the protection of the family, just as they had to detach themselves from the protective placenta. The urge towards emotional independence arouses the need amongst young people ‘to go out’, to leave the old cocoon that has become suffocating, and to discover new ‘spaces’ where they can feel free and spread their wings. ‘To go out’ is the key phrase that expresses quite well the dynamism of ‘being young’ and that young people literally accomplish when they actually ‘go out’.5

4 U. BECK, E. BECK-GERNSHEIM, Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe, Frankfurt, 1990.

5 Cf. F. DOLTO, La cause des adolescents, Paris, 1988. 4 It is precisely a restrained and discrete, cordial love that does not bind young people to the educator but, on the contrary, refers them to their contemporaries in order to develop their emotionality and relational lives. Education consists precisely in creating the potential space in order to develop in a healthy and qualitative manner ‘horizontal relationships’, meaning to say relationships with one’s contemporaries whereby the emphasis lies on the experience of relationship itself in its diversity and gradual growth toward deeper involvement and intimacy. Group bonding, camaraderie and friendship are, after all, the best learning grounds of love for young people. Thus not only are the conditions created for becoming sensitive to the ‘meaning-fullness’ a ‘community of love and life’ (marriage) and of all vocations of of other relational commitments, but also the conditions for all further values education and experience of values, both on the ethical as well as the religious level.

II. RATIONALITY AND ETHICAL WISDOM

A second dimension of any values education is rationality, not so much to be understood as intellectuality but as reasonableness, of which ethical emotion and ethical normativity are a specific expression, as we shall now see.

Reasonableness creates space for a communicative moral education

A responsible education can suffice with an educational climate that is emotionally ‘sheltering’, but at the same time has need for ‘explanation’ and ‘confrontation’. Education should not only be emotional but also rational, meaning to say discursive.6 The subjective dimension of emotionality, which contains the risk of fusing identification, must be surpassed by objectivity and reason. If values education would only happen by means of an immersion in the emotionality of a ‘cosy home base’, in which one enjoyably participates for consolation and comfort, then one ends up in the risk of a ‘values temptation’ which is inherent in emotionality and which makes dependent and not free. Nonetheless, it is precisely the right significance and task of maturing and becoming adult that one no longer lets oneself be determined by another than oneself (‘Fremdbestimmung’), but determines oneself by oneself (‘Selbstbestimmung’). That is why values education should grow towards an honest and objective confrontation with values, and this by means of reasoning and discussion, because these create the objectivity and necessary distance whereby one no longer feels emotionally ‘claimed’ but is enabled to think and to judge for oneself, and gradually to arrive at one’s own views. On the other hand, it is only in the context of sheltering emotionality that the dimension of rationality can be constructively introduced, because rationality and its ‘law’ with all its frustrations are too hard and hurtful without the embedment in emotionality, surely for the education of one who has just left the ‘first nest’.

A ‘reasonable enough father’

Parallel with the idea of a ‘good mother’ as the symbolic expression of emotionality, we can

6 Cf. R. BLEISTEIN, ‘Individualisierung und Identität’, in: Stimmen der Zeit 117 (1992) nr. 10, p. 670. 5 here speak of the need for a ‘reasonable father’ as the symbolic expression of reasonableness. Just as young people, in the affective chaos that is a consequence of their emotional maturation, need a ‘good mother’ – a new ‘nest’ – so do young people, in their growth toward self-determination on the basis of their own insights and views, need a ‘reasonable father’ who does not emotionally prevail over them or, on the basis of his ‘paternal authority’ or ‘position of superiority’, manipulates them towards a certain direction, but confronts them with the ‘important matters of life’ from the objectivity of insightfully formulated and reasonably argued convictions. In this manner growing young people are provided the elements that stimulate them, literally ‘provoke’ or ‘summon’ them to further think for themselves and gradually arrive at their own standpoints. We can call this also the growth towards a ‘formed conscience’. Nonetheless, this is not about a ‘totally reasonable father’ but only a ‘reasonable enough father’. If the ‘father figure’, namely the teacher, who interprets views and standpoints on values, is totally reasonable, so much so that one literally becomes ‘watertight’, then pupils are robbed of the possibility of ‘disputing’ and discussing out of the conviction of one’s own rightness that rests on a personally attained insight. A parent, educator or guide who is fully ‘wise’, who avails of the ‘splendour of truth’ and thus knows with huge certainty what is best, makes all educational conversation impossible. Then pupils can never bring in something of themselves because the educator is already presumed right beforehand. Then they would never experience the satisfaction of knowing something by themselves or of once being right. Entering into conversation (an exchange of ideas and words) with a totally reasonable, ‘all- knowing’ father actually makes no sense. Only a finite father who now and then can be ‘irrational’ or not entirely reasonable – not strategically but because as a historically contingent being he does not have a claim onto all wisdom – creates space for a real educational relationship. In such a relationship, all insights do not come from one side only, the teacher’s, but also from the pupils, however partial and fragmentary these may be at times. True conversation consists in listening and otherwise answering, says Franz Rosenzweig, and this is also the basis for all values education, which not only makes one sensitive to values but also brings about insight into values.

Reasonableness as confrontation with the ‘law of reality’

The dimension of rationality in education, however, does not take place only through a content-wise and discursive communication of standpoints, insights and views, but also through ‘reasonableness’ understood as confrontation with reality. To put it in Freudian terms, the principle of lust that immediately wants everything has need for the confrontation with reality in order to become ‘sober’ and in a ‘realistic’ way achieve the desire.7 As the proverb says, ‘Grab all, loose all’. Or ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. Desire that is left all to itself, in the illusion of its own omnipotence and thus is totalitarian and megalomaniac, needs an external ‘wisdom’ that can bring it to ‘reason’. Only the ‘truth’ of reality can free someone of one’s self-absorption and open one up to the ‘law’ of reality. Well then, this wisdom comes from the external reality both in myself as well as outside of myself – external because it does not ensue from desire itself and teaches desire a ‘lesson’. In this way, reality appears as the ‘other than desire’, meaning to say as the otherness that endeavours to bring desire to reasonableness. The confrontation with reality that unrelentingly poses its ‘laws’ thus brings along a ‘healthy common sense’. This rationality

7T. ANATRELLA, Interminables adolescences. Les 12-30 ans, puberté, adolescence, postadolescence. «Une société adolescentrique», Paris, 2002 (10th ed.), pp. 92-100. 6 tempers and moderates not only desire but likewise opens it up for ‘that which is more than desire’, namely for objective reality in its ‘difference’ and otherness.

Ethical emotionality or ‘heteronomous affection’ by the vulnerable face of the other

The most eminent and radical form of the ‘law of reality’ is the other person, who is not only another me, an ‘alter-ego’, but also the stranger interrupting my personal preoccupation with my own happiness.8 The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) calls this the radical and irreducible otherness of the other.9 In my being concerned for myself and my own happiness (‘sollicitude’), despite myself I am confronted with the irreducible other. That the other shows up in my existence finds its origin in everything else but my initiative; and yet it precedes, on the contrary, my freedom. With Levinas, we can call this intervention by the other an ‘an-archic’ and ‘pre-original’ event: It does not commence in my freedom, which presents itself as ‘arché’ or ‘fundamental principle’ and origin of responsibility and meaning. Something essential develops and happens to me outside of my own knowing and doing. It is by means of the fact that the other appears to me – a fact that completely escapes my own capacities – that something new develops and happens to me, and this in the strictly passive sense. The other happens to me, what makes to other to be a ‘happening’ that affects me. And we have to understand this affection literally as a ‘hetero-affection’: being affected by the other despite myself. The other not only appears as a formal and neutral fact, that happens, but as a fact that touches me. I’m ‘moved’ by the event or the epiphany of the other and this in the literal sense of the word: I’m emotionally touched and thrown upside down. This passivity – this ‘passion through the other’ - is not based on my initiative. The other enters into my existence ‘from elsewhere’ – ‘from the outside’ – in a fully unforeseen and uncontrollable way. This implies the radical or irreducible heteronomy, exteriority and superiority of the other.10 But there is something strange about this radical otherness or irreducibility of the other. Our daily reality shows in fact – and the newspapers are full of it – how the other continuously is reduced and stripped of from his otherness, just to become a means or a function of all forms of self-interest. In this sense the other is also naked and vulnerable (“strangeness-as-destitution”), his existence and well-being is continuously at risk. In fact, we can reduce the other to ourselves, we can neglect the other and treat him with indifference, we can exclude, hate, persecute or kill the other in so many forms: “murder, it is true, is a banal fact: one can kill the other”11 In this sense the irreducibility of the other is not based on any kind of ontological, empirical or biological power and necessity, but is only ethical: I can reduce the other to myself, and it continuously happens, but I should not do it. Levinas calls this ‘the ethical exigency’ coming to me through the vulnerable nakedness of the face of the other. In his nakedness the other “is exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence”.12 At the same time in and through this attraction to violence we ‘feel’ – we are aware – that we cannot, or better we should not let us seduce by this ‘temptation to kill’. In this sense the naked and vulnerable face of the other is what forbids us to kill. Through the appearance of the naked and vulnerable other I feel myself shocked in my spontaneous self- sufficiency and called into question. In the words of Levinas: “The relation with the face is straightaway ethical. The face is what one cannot kill, or at least it is that whose meaning 8 P. RICOEUR, Oneself as another, Chicago/London, 1992, pp. 180-194. 9 R. BURGGRAEVE, The wisdom of love in the service of love. Emmanuel Levinas on justice, peace, and human rights, Milwaukee, 2002, pp. 85-121. 10 E. LEVINAS, Totality and Infinity. An essay on exteriority, The Hague/Boston/London, 1979, p. 36-40. 11 E. LEVINAS, Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Pittsburgh, 1985, p. 87. 12 Ibid., p. 86. 7 consists in saying: ‘you shall not kill’13, to be understood as the ‘wordless word’ that calls upon me as an unconditional categorical imperative (see further our reflection on the paradoxical meaning of this and other prohibitions). In this sense the face of the other, interrupting our existence, is the source of the ethical affection and emotionality, revealing a specific relational character. The face of the other introduces in my existence a heteronomous movement: I’m traumatised, touched and moved by the vulnerability of the naked other. Of course, I can do as if I’m not touched by the other, but then I refuse – reject, exclude, kill – the other, and this indifference is exactly what is ethically unacceptable: “even the authority of the prohibition is maintained in the bad conscience about the accomplished evil – malignancy of evil”.14 When we think further about this hetero-affection by the face of the other, leading to the experience of the prohibition against killing, and we ask questions about the conditions of possibility of this ethical emotionality, we have to presuppose our ‘touchability’. The fact of being touched by the other is only possible if I’m already touchable. I have to be ‘movable’ to be moved in fact by the epiphany of the other; I have to be ‘vulnerable’ to be touched in fact by the naked face of the other. My factual ‘hetero-affection’ by the other presupposes my ‘affectability’ by the other, and this affectability precedes my initiative and free decision making, and therefore also my consciousness. I’m already responsible, my being is already made – created – responsible, before I can assume any form of responsibility for the other. This devotion to the other, or better this being dedicated to the other despite myself, this ‘being-through-and-for-the-other’ we must designate as the absolute novelty of man on earth, as “the miracle of the human”.15 But there is still more we have to presuppose. My ethical being is not only emotional but also corporeal, in the sense that the ethical emotionality is also corporeal. In order to be able to be moved, I must be bodily through and through, meaning to say I must have a ‘heart of flesh’ that is sensitive and vulnerable to what happens to the other. Here, ethics exists not primarily out of grand reasonings or a ‘moral catechism’ that founds grand principles and then derives all the rest in all specific detail. In the footsteps of rationalistic modernity, we perhaps have reduced ethics too much to knowledge that reflects about principles and procedures, and then applies them. Even though in a second instance, ethics must become reasoning and reflection (see below), in its origin it ultimately cannot be reduced to grand reasonings and theories. The ethical involvement in the other, on the contrary, finds its first, existential starting point in my body that by means of its vulnerability is sensitive to the fate or to what happens to the other human being. Inter-human ethics, in the first place, has to do with ‘being touched’ and ‘being able to be moved’ by the fate of the very concrete other. Our lived body – our ‘body subject’ as Gabriel Marcel would say – is our ‘spirit’, not that we coincide with the materiality of our body, but in the sense that our lived body is the bearer and condition of possibility of our spirit, to be understood as being ‘inspired’ and ‘animated’ by the other. 16 There is no ‘spirit’ without ‘body’; that is our human condition and human experience. Think of the expressions that people sometimes use when they see someone else’s suffering: ‘My heart bleeds for that person. I cannot bear the sight of it.’ The misery, the suffering or the injustice that affects the other does not touch us ‘spiritually’, separated from or despite our body, but precisely through our body and its sensitivity (which is at the same time sensorial and emotional receptivity, as in the French term ‘sensibilité’). Because 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., p. 87. 15 E. LEVINAS, ‘La vocation de l’autre’ (interview), in: E. HIRSCH, Racismes. L’autre et son visage, Paris, 1988, p. 99. 16See for example: J.B. NELSON, Body Theology, Westminster,1992, pp. 41-54; .M. MARZANO-PARISOLI, Penser le corps, Paris, 2002, pp. 3-8. 8 our subjective sensitivity is at the same time bodily awareness, the ‘spiritual’ comes about in and through our bodily sensitivity. This ‘sensibilité’ needs to be understood as ‘vulnerability’ in the strictly passive sense of the word and not primarily as an active engagement or much less as an inclination of openness to the other. With this, we come across the quite characteristic meaning of the ethical emotionality to understand as ‘passion’ through and for the other. Before it is an active, intentional and strong movement towards the other, which does not calculate too much or restrain oneself ‘carefully’, but on the contrary exerts enthusiastically and fervently all available strengths, it is in the first place a passive, bodily and emotional ‘movedness’: one ‘becomes’ moved, appealed to and set in motion by the appearance of the naked other. Before the passion for the other becomes an active deed, it is first ‘undergoing something because of the other’. What is meant with ‘sensibilité’ or sensitivity, preceding all choice, is an essential ‘touchability’ which is already given with our bodily condition.17 We are touched by the face of the other because we are touchable, and we are touchable because we are bodily through and through. This ‘sensitivity’ is not a merit, but a condition of our existence itself whereby we are ethical, that means created already ‘non- indifferent’, beings who are – or better who were - called to be responsible for the other despite ourselves. And this bodily and emotional ‘sensitivity despite oneself’ is our spirituality, in the sense that we are touched and animated by the other than ourselves. And this heteronomous sensitivity is at the same time bodily through and through. Or put differently, the incarnation of human subjectivity, rooted in its emotional and bodily touchability, is the guarantee of its spirituality.18

The paradoxical meaning of prohibitions

Our considerations concerning ‘the law of reality’, and particularly concerning the radical otherness of the other, make clear that ethics is the setting where the ‘law of reality’ reveals itself in a specific, essential way. That is why there is no single education possible without it having to be an explicit moral education, with its values and norms, with its demands and rules. Ethics is, after all, the expression of the literally ‘pragmatic’ (attuned to praxis or action) wisdom that one precisely discovers and acquires through the confrontation with the ‘law’ of reality and otherness, which imposes its limits, conditions and demands upon us. In connection to this confrontation, we would like to put forward a paradoxical thesis. We are convinced that a moral education that introduces the dimension of ‘reasonableness’ in emotionality is more advantaged with negative, delimiting boundary rules than with positive behaviour prescriptions. It is remarkable how in this society, where there is much explicit resistance against what is moral and ‘moralising’, a concealed, enormous longing for ‘implicit’ morals is at work. If you regularly check weekly magazines or illustrated journals, then you find a series of advice regarding all sorts of themes (especially on health, professional life, relationships and sexuality) at best given by all kinds of ‘specialists’ on the basis of experience and/or scientific knowledge (including the much read horoscopes). What is notable here is that this especially covers positive ‘rules’: matters that one actually would have to do in order to be, to remain, or to become once again, healthy, or to succeed in

17 E. LEVINAS, Otherwise than being or beyond essence, The Hague/Boston/London, 1981, 61-97. 18 An old Jewish Talmud narrative tells of the protest of the angels when the divine Torah was at the point of leaving heaven in order to be given to humans. But the Eternal One calmed them down: The laws contained in the Torah are made for the earth. They are not applicable to the condition of the angels who are not born and who do not die, do not work nor eat, nor own property, nor sell. The angels resign themselves. Do they feel flattered and proud? Or do they, on the contrary, realize the superiority of humans on earth who are capable of giving and of existing for one another and thus create the conditions ‘where God enters in our midst’? Cf. E. LEVINAS, Outside the subject, London, 1993, p. 39. 9 business, in one’s profession, in social life, in relationships and in sex. But because these rules or prescriptions (‘recommendations’) are usually clad in the professional, objective language of the expert with the ‘white jacket’, they do not sound moralising, while they – upon closer inspection – simply contain a new form of ‘morality’ but now in a (pseudo-)scientific garb. It seems as if the post- or late-modern person in the actual confusing pluralism of values, wherein they must figure out everything for themselves, cannot after all do without norms and rules and hence are in search of new ‘gurus’ or ‘masters’ who can ‘prescribe’ them – sometimes for money – the right advice or code of behaviour. Our society has become a world where the ‘prescription’ (whether medical or not) not only acquires a curative but also more and more a moral, i.e. behaviour norming, significance. In comparison with this ‘concealed morals’, it is remarkable that explicit ethics, the ethics that presents itself frankly as ethics and does not hide behind all sorts of ‘disguises’ does not so much work with positive behaviour rules, i.e. with norms that prescribe certain actions, but rather quite modestly with negative norms that forbid a certain behaviour. As an eminent illustration, we can refer to the second table of the Ten Commandments, wherein the inner worldly society is deal with (while the first table concerns the relationship with God). In that second table we find a number of prohibitions: ‘you shall not kill’, ‘you shall not lie’, ‘you shall not steal’, ‘you shall not commit adultery’, ‘you shall not covet… anything that is your neighbour’s” (this last prohibition being the expression of the perverted desire behind the previous forbidden transgressions). As negative formulations, these prohibitions sound at first hard and unrelenting to the ears. They directly go against the total dynamism of our desires that wants ‘everything all at once’, and that in its megalomaniac efforts is not only unreasonable but of itself does not accept any obstruction or questioning. That is why it is fully ‘normal’ that the human person time and again has difficulty with ethics since through its ‘prohibitions’ on our desires it poses demands to which this desiring ‘by nature’, i.e. out of its spontaneous dynamism, is not inclined to. The resistance against morals is not a new and typical phenomenon of our time with its emphasis on the individual; it is only a characteristic and specific expression of an aggressiveness that time and again arises in all times and societies. Human desire is simply the way it is, out of its own narcissistic principle it tolerates no ‘castration’ or forbidding ‘law’ (which precisely for that reason can only come ‘from elsewhere’, i.e. from civilisation or culture, and finally from the epiphany of the naked and vulnerable face of the other, as a form of ‘healthy common sense’ or ‘wisdom’).19 And yet the paradox of the prohibition consists precisely in that through its negativity it offers more space for the freedom and the creativity than the commandment (to be understood as a behavioural norm). A forbidding, negatively formulated behavioural norm opens the field of human possibilities because it only delineates the bottom-line of what is humane and does not itself normatively establish and interpret what is humane or meaningful.20 What is characteristic of the prohibition is that it appeals to human creativity by closing off the impasses. A simple example can make this clear. Imagine a family with children going for a walk in the forest. When they come upon an intersection with five bifurcations the ‘problem’ arises as to which path (will) the children have to take. The parents can tackle this problem in two ways. Either they determine themselves which path for the children is the best, and they normatively impose this path. With this, they can act directly in an imperative and authoritative way, or – what usually happens – rather indirectly, namely by means of enticement and ‘aestheticisation’ of the ‘best path’ that they present to their children. They present this path in such a ‘beautiful’ and enticing way, for instance by pointing out the

19 J.S. GRABOWSKI, Sex and Virtue. An introduction to sexual ethics, Washington, 2003, pp.159-167. 20 P. BEAUCHAMP, D’une montagne à l’autre. La loi de Dieu, Paris, 1999, pp. 13-28. 10 largest circus – the wonderful reward – that awaits them at the end of the path and the colourful and fascinating attractions of various clowns, artists, acrobats and magicians along the way, whereby not only the ‘end-goal’ but also the path itself is presented pleasantly, in the hope that they can bring their children ‘without coercion’, as it were, to choose the ‘best’ path that is laid out for them. Such a values education, however, rests on ideological manipulation, even though it camouflages its authoritarian-imposing character behind the façade of an aestheticised or decorated positive value-attraction. In this way, the freedom of the child is strongly restricted, if not radically assailed and destroyed. The other possibility consists in that the parents only intervene educationally, when their children are about to take one of the five paths that is a dead-end path: ‘Don’t you see what that sign says: “No entry: dead-end road”?’ By means of this approach the creativity of the educatees is not restrained, but on the contrary challenged, since four other paths are laid open among which they themselves must now choose. The prohibition does not say what they must do, what is best for them; it only says what they must not do in order not to end up in the wrong. The prohibition refers only to the other paths as possibilities by denying entrance to, or rather by prohibiting, the dead-end path. The prohibition is, after all, not coercion since it only appeals to the freedom of choice of the human person in question and not effectively hinder them from opting for the dead-end path. Children (or young people) can indeed enter into the dead- end road and try it out for themselves, if they absolutely want to do so. The prohibition does not hinder this since it only ‘verbally’ points to the risks of the choice. The prohibition is a linguistic event that is dialogical: it is directed by someone, who represents the wisdom of experience, to someone else who does not yet or insufficiently avail of this wisdom. And by means of the fact that it is spoken between persons as a word event, the hearer of the prohibition can either listen to this word or ignore it completely. It is apparent from this how a prohibition is precisely the opposite of physical, psychological, social or mental coercion, how a prohibition not only presupposes freedom but also founds and promotes it. Whoever completely ignores the prohibition, however, and takes the dead-end path, will indeed find out that the path does end and be obliged to trace back one’s steps (if that is still possible, for the ‘dead-end possibility’ can be so lethal that no return is possible and that one can no longer recover).21 It is apparent from this that the prohibition (‘you may NOT take this path because it is a dead-end’) should not be a lie, but on the contrary should rest on the reliable wisdom of experience, namely that a behaviour places a certain fundamental value at stake. We can synthesise all this with a fortunate expression inspired by Saint Augustine: the prohibitions form the ‘basic-conditions’ for the love of neighbour. This term needs to be taken literally: the prohibitions are the indispensable ‘conditions’ for a meaningful human social life, but they do not fill in this qualitatively humane social life themselves. They only open up the perspective towards the integral excellence of the love of neighbour, without normatively illustrating this love of neighbour according to concrete models and modes of action. The prohibitions are a necessary, but only a first step on the path to freedom and qualitative, ‘meaning-full’ life.

Prohibitions create space for taste

By means of opening up the path for freedom, the prohibitions also open up the path for personal creativity which should give shape, according to one’s own taste and capability, to the value that is protected and profiled by the prohibition. The prohibition only points to a 21 X. THÉVENOT, Souffrance, bonheur, éthique. Conférences spirituelles, Mulhouse, 1990, pp. 77-78. 11 ‘path leading to death’ and for the rest leaves full responsibility for the discovery and the exploration of the ‘path leading to life’ Let us illustrate this paradoxical relationship between prohibition and creativity on the basis of the already cited prohibitions from the second table of the Ten Commandments. If we try to positively formulate a prohibition, a shift in levels always takes place. While the prohibition forbids a concrete, negative deed or action, for instance ‘to kill’, ‘to lie’, ‘to commit adultery’, where it turns out that a prohibition also implies a double denial, the corresponding commandment lends itself to the level of disposition, to be understood as the quality of the moral personality. Indeed, when we attempt to express a prohibition positively, we arrive at a commandment. However, this commandment is not a behavioural norm anymore, like the prohibition, but an attitudinal norm. This positive formulation only indicates the fundamental attitude that the execution of the corresponding prohibition supports. This fundamental attitude is consequently expressed in a prohibition that is no longer a rule of behaviour, but a dispositional norm that indicates a manner of being, a value orientation, a sensitivity. We can call it also a ‘moral emotion’.22 Such a dispositional norm, appealing to develop a moral attitude and emotion into a virtuous moral character, actually says nothing about concrete behaviour. It only indicates which moral personality one must have, how one must be (feel and will), but with that, it does not yet say what one concretely must do. The dispositional norm, implied in a prohibition, concerns the soul or the heart of doing, without saying anything about the concrete content of the action that must be done to make true the moral emotion and attitude. The positive reverse-side of ‘You shall not kill’ is the appeal to ‘respect for life’ (respect for the other, quality of presence, caring, tenderness); of ‘You shall not lie’ the task to honesty and authenticity, of ‘You shall not steal’ the imperative to ‘respect property (mine and thine)’ and ‘You shall not commit adultery’ the task towards fidelity (exclusivity and permanency). .23 This confronts us with a two-sided paradox. Neither an attitudinal norm, expressing the appeal to transform a fundamental moral emotion into a permanent attitude of the will, nor the negatively formulated behavioural norm or prohibition, tells what has to be done. No quality of nearness, tenderness and love between persons is possible if killing takes place, just as no honest society based on trust, no respect for what is mine and thine, nor fidelity are possible if lying, stealing and adultery are committed that they become fundamental drives, meaning to say when one starts from the principle (certain conflicting situations where higher values that are at stake are not taken into consideration) that one in all circumstances and equally towards anyone may speak untruths, may alienate property, and may be unfaithful. In doing so, a humane social life is fundamentally undermined. But with that, all is not yet said about ethics. For if people do not use violence against each other, there still is no concrete experience of love. Or when people do not lie to each other, an atmosphere of trust and authenticity is not automatically created, just as there is not yet respect for what is mine and thine, for each other’s uniqueness and contribution in a relationship or in a community when people do not steal from each other or do not violate the uniqueness of the other. And there is not yet an expressively developed ‘culture of faithful love’ when no adultery takes place. It is no merit not to kill, not to lie, not to steal or not to commit adultery: everything else still has to be done. When one observes the prohibitions and does not commit violence, not lie, not

22 R.S. PETERS, ‘The education of emotions’, in: M.B. ARNOLD (ed.), Feelings and Emotions, New York, 1970, pp. 187-203; B. SPIECKER, ‘Education and the moral emotions’, in: ID., R. STRAUGHAN (eds.), Philosophical issues in moral education and development, Milton Keynes, 1988, pp. 43-63; B. ROEBBEN, ‘Catching a glimpse of the palace of Reason. The education of moral emotions’, in: Journal of moral education, 24(1995), n. 2, pp. 185-197. 23 T.C.J. BEEMER, ‘The moral law’, in: F. VOSMAN, K.-W. MERKS (eds.), Aiming at happiness. The moral teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. An analysis and commentary, Kampen, 1996, pp. 192-193. 12 steal or not commit adultery, one has not yet done anything in order to realise a life promoting, upright, respectful and faithful inter-human and social relation. The minimum conditions for that purpose are indeed present. The space for humane and meaningful relationships is created. There is a bottom in the glass that is, however, not yet filled with water. The bottom is indeed necessary, or else everything is spilled away, but in that case the glass is not yet filled with drink. To fill the glass is not only but not doing something, but also doing something concrete. But for this concrete action, namely the real authentication of non- violent, genuine, respectful and faithful relationships in tangible forms and signs, one cannot rely on the prohibition. For that, one must appeal entirely to the capacity of one’s own freedom in order to design in a creative way the shapes and paths of effective respect for life, trust, respect for what is mine and thine, and faithfulness.

Ethics and moral education as aesthetics

With that one does not so much need norms that prescribe how we must live and act meaningfully – this would only curtail our freedom, to be understood as ‘freedom for’ – but rather one needs suggestive examples, inspiring models, testimonies and experiences of others, that instead show us how it can be done, without prescribing patronisingly how it must.24 On the level of ethical growth towards human ‘meaningfulness’, we have no need of normative models to copy or slavishly imitate, but of ‘terrific’ modes of experience that can give us the ‘taste’ for non-violent tenderness and respectful fellowship with each other’s lives, for trust-inspiring and authentic speech, for the acknowledgement of each other’s property and characteristic uniqueness, and for lifelong fidelity in its humane, full quality. In this manner, we also begin to long to substantiate these values in all their attractive excellence. We can learn enormously much from the experiences of others and of the way in which they give qualitative and expressive shape to fundamental values like respect for life, trust, valuing what is mine and thine, fidelity-through-thick-and-thin, without these experiences becoming commandments or norms of action in the strict sense of the word, but rather invitations and catching suggestions to give these same values form and soul in one’s very own characteristic and unique way. At this, we arrive the aesthetic dimension of ethics, which no longer has anything to do with the bottom-line or the minimum but rather with the optimum as the perspective of ‘meaningfulness’. In moral education, this aesthetic of ethics plays an important role. Throughout the beauty of ethical values that are illuminated in realised lifestyles, moral characters, modes of action and life projects, young people can also participate tangibly and visibly, ‘in actu exercitu’, in this lived out life of values. It is through its incarnation that ethics radiates its very own convincing force, which can not be realised by any cognitive or intellectual reasoning. ‘Actions speak louder than words’, the proverb rightly states. Although a reasoning and reflexive communication of values should not be absent in education, an ethics without aesthetics will hardly be able to realise its orientating and humanising task on an existential level, i.e. on the level of the lived out, everyday praxis. It is not so much the force or rational acuity of a reasoning that makes someone choose for a qualitatively ethical existence, but rather the catching radiance of this project that is consistently lived out by people of flesh and blood in difficult circumstances and precisely in that manner are able to inspire. In the living contact with these people, children and adolescents can directly taste the powerful excellence

24 M. SCHELER, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, Bern/München, 1965, 5th ed., p. 560. 13 of ethical life. What is characteristic of this aesthetics of ethics is that the modes of experience, that is at the same time embodied in an edifying and yet achievable manner by imperfect but able-bodied people, address in the first place the imagination and one’s feelings. In this sense the aesthetics of ethics reveals another aspect of the relationship between emotionality and values education. What results from this is that discursive moral education, for which we have argued above with the image of the ‘reasonable father’, should not only run the course of reasoning and argumentation that are couched in an abstract, cognitive language. Pupils should not only be given the opportunity to discourse in an open and at the same time confrontational way about ethical values and modes of action. They must likewise be given the chance to experience for themselves ‘meaningful living and acting’ and to taste it from within. In the first place, by participating in concrete projects, wherein the commitment of the entire person – not only one’s intellect, but also one’s desire, feeling, fantasy, body and will – is involved. But aesthetics must be brought in also on the level of the discursive communication of values itself, namely the aesthetics of language and image. For the development of ethical ‘sensitivity’, more is needed than a cognitive-intellectual, abstract language game. The evocative language of ‘eloquent’ images, narratives, testimonies, films, poems, drawings, paintings and others, that all at once touch one’s fantasy, feelings and desire, add an irreplaceable ‘fervent’ dimension to reasoning language. It is especially the aesthetics of language, form and image that convincingly and motivationally works in order to anchor the insight in values in the feelings and longings of children and young people.25

The educational need for ethical communities of participation

This ethical communication process presupposes not only the participation in the ethically lived life of other individual persons but likewise and especially of 'moral communities'.26 It is by means of tradition, meaning to say by what has been handed down and thus precedes us, that we can make our own with taste and conviction certain moral emotions, attitudes, modes of behaviour and lifestyles. A solipsistic ethical life is after all not possible. Ethics can never be a 'one-man-show'. No person all by oneself – like a drowned person on an island – can live and act in an ethically meaningful way, surely when we also take into account the limitedness and one-sidedness of each one's capacities and commitments. As finite and likewise fallible beings, people need each other and ethical life can only begin to thrive when each one's partial and deficient ethical strivings and actions are filled up and 'made whole' by those of others, in particular by those of a supporting community. To live an ethical life is never done alone. Only a shared ethical life is a fruitful ethical life. We are dialogical and ‘covenantal’ beings (cf. supra). We are no 'causa sui', no 'self-cause' who out of our interiority as principle and source arrive at ethical insights and practices. Out of human experiential wisdom, out of what people in the past have realized in terms of ethical excellence, – and also out of the mistakes, stupidities, smaller and larger derailments, in short out of the 'evil' that has been committed27 – children and (young) people of today can derive orientations and suggestions 25 G. MORAN, No ladder to the sky. Education and morality, San Francisco, 1987. 26. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre have especially brought to light the importance of 'moral communities', 'narrative communities' or 'communicative communities' for 'ethical learning' See: S. HAUERWAS, Vision and virtue. Essays in Christian ethical reflection, Notre Dame, 1974. A. MACINTYRE, After virtue. A study in moral theory, London, 1985 (2nd ed.); ID., Whose justice? Which rationality, London, 1988. 27. 'Experience' is perhaps not so much the remembrance of our best performances and peak moments which we have been able to experience, but more especially our mistakes and blunders which we have committed. We remember those not only very well, but we often learn the most from them. The 'memory' of evil committed in the past is an indispensable source of ethical knowledge, not only in order to keep alive in our minds the 14 for their own lives, in order in their turn to be able to hand them over as 'processed inspiration' to those who come after them. We are thus not only actual social beings who try to live our lives together in the here and now, but also essentially intergenerational beings whereby we are dependent on our 'predecessors' in order to be able to grow towards moral sensitivity, truth and praxis. No one becomes ethically sensitive and proficient without other parents and grandparents, family, relatives and the wider community, out of which new people time and again receive the chance to discover and to tread into their path of life. It is precisely through this community life anchored in space and time that ethical aesthetics, which is indispensable in achieving a meaningful living and acting, takes shape. In other words, it is not only important but equally indispensable as oxygen is to breathing that people be able to participate in moral communities wherein ethical quality is experienced in such a way that this quality neither deters nor is underestimated, but includes a stimulus by means of its 'beauty' in order to grow towards that which is meaningful, each one according to one's own possibilities, opportunities for growth and limitations. We can also call this the necessity for 'participative communities'. With participative communities we mean a community where (young and less young) people share in and with each others' ethical inspiration and thus give a good grounding to their own ethical commitment and make it 'bearable'. Only by participating in concrete ethical projects, wherein the commitment of the whole person – not only one's intellect, but also one's desire, emotionality, fantasy, body and will – is involved can one acquire the chance to develop from the inside out a delicate taste for a meaningful living and acting. Whoever cannot 'share' in values, moral emotions and dispositions, modes of behaviour and life, and this in the double sense of 'co-experiencing' and also 'co- constructing', can never acquire a sensitivity and taste for what is a meaningful and loving life, neither for the joy that the effort and 'burden' thereof can bring along. Without a participative community, people can never discover that a virtuous life, as the dynamic attitudinal permanency of moral emotions not only takes effort and sacrifices but also gives a reason for happiness and emotionally and spiritually fulfils For that purpose every moral community must also be also a 'narrative community' where one exchanges, where people find each other and listen in a non-normative but suggestive, enriching, challenging way; where people do not moralize from their experiential wisdom but give witness and inspire, invite and literally ‘pro-voke’, 'call out forward', so that the 'pre-given' ethical heritage can take shape in a dynamic and even progressive way. An ethical narrative community is literally a community where people tell their story and in doing so find inspiration and strength. It is also where the 'foundational' stories with the experiential wisdom of the 'ancestors' are not only narrated on but also celebrated in symbolic signs and rituals. A plea for a communicative ethics is likewise applicable here, for an experiential ethics of witnessing where one learns of the aesthetics of ethics, of the human civilization and culture of others, without these 'heteronomous' – coming from elsewhere – experiences having a peremptory or legalistic character. It is not a question of being obliged in a moralizing way, but of being appealed to, 'living-and-experiencing-along-with', tasting and gradually realizing and valuing.

Ethical and educational aesthetics in the context of religious education

To conclude these reflections on rationality and ethics as the second dimension of values awareness of possible disastrous human perversity and degenerateness, but also in order to foresee and prevent in the future such forms of inhumanity. Cf. P. RICOEUR, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris, 2000, pp. 449- 459, 536-543; especially pp. 642-650. 15 education, it is clear in connection to the theme of this contribution, that moral education and formation are not only important in themselves as an essential form of the humanising of ‘being-human’, both personal as well as in community, but at the same time make up an essential part of integral religious education in general, and of a Christian inspired religious education in particular. The Christian profession of faith in God (cf. infra), after all, essentially includes an ethical dimension, synthesised in the love of neighbour, as an ‘effective and real’ mediation and authentication of the faith. Hence, Christian education will always include moral education and communication of values, and this on the two levels just sketched of prohibition and taste, of boundary rules and aesthetics. No Christian inspired religious education can ignore the confrontation with the fundamental boundary rules or prohibitions from the second table of the Ten Commandments, insofar as they depict the conditions for the love of neighbour and make up as well its verification, in the sense that its fulfilment shows how real the effort is for the love of neighbour. On the other hand, the development of a Christian ethical aesthetics is just as essential, whereby the attractiveness of love comes to life in the visible and tangible forms of humans of flesh and blood, both in individuals as well as in community projects. Thus children and young people can be addressed and inspired to incarnate the love of neighbour in a creative way, according to their own place and time (and thus bear witness to God Himself). The ‘mould’ par excellence of the Christian ethical aesthetics can be no one else than Christ himself, who as the living incarnation of God, has given shape in a unique way to the irresistible and liberating dynamism of love. Even though on the basis of his ‘mystical’, divine dimension (cf. also infra), he can never be reduced to the function of his ethical example, yet on the basis of his ethical praxis and also of his ethically evocative language in his parables, he is the ‘image’ par excellence in Christian moral education. As the extension of Christ as ethical incarnation, those who in their lives were (and are) able to give shape to the evangelical love of neighbour in a strong, uniquely special manner play an important, inspiring and stimulating role in a Christian moral education. With regard to these (old or new) ‘saints’, ‘idols and icons’,28 one must, however, take care not only to introduce great or ‘severe’ figures, because this can lead to discouragement, but also very ordinary, small figures or unknown ‘saints’, who in an achievable and nonetheless profiled and appealing way can ‘portray’ a glimmer or an accent of God’s gospel. Moreover, one should take care that the ‘example figures’ introduced can find sufficient connection with the lifeworld of children and young people, even if they may be opposed to it, precisely because the gospel also works against the current and points not only to the broad way down but to the narrow way up.29

III. MEANING GIVING INTEGRATION AND RELIGION

The third, integrating dimension of all values education, but surely of a religiously inspired values education, concerns the dimension of meaning.30 With that, what takes centre stage is

28 B. VANREUSEL, ‘Elite sports as a catwalk. The culture of the body and the normalization of Excess’, in: R. BURGGRAEVE, J. DE TAVERNIER, D. POLLEFEYT, J. HANSSENS (eds.), Desirable God? Our fascination with images, idols and new deities, Leuven/Dudley, 2003, pp. 199-209. 29 E. WYSCHOGROD, Saints and Postmodernism, Chicago/London, 1990, pp. 3-60. 30 R. BLEISTEIN, ‘Zwischen Antipädagogik und postmoderner Pädagogik. Neuere Theorien in der Erziehungswissenschaft’, in: Stimmen der Zeit, 117 (1992) n. 3, pp. 169-170. 16 not only, or even not in the first place, the active giving of meaning by the human person but also and especially the orientation towards meaning, that comes to the human person from the ‘mystical’ or ‘divine’ dimension of the ‘other’ than himself or herself, i.e. from reality and the other – as symbols of or traces towards the other/The Other par excellence. From the start of this contribution it has been made clear that the approach of religion cannot be neutral, but that is rooted in the existential biotope of the author, namely the Christian tradition, not in a sectarian but in an open dialogical and discursive way. To use an image of Paul Ricoeur, we are on speaking terms between different philosophical and religious convictions and visions, and for this dialogue we need the (hard) work of translation, including all kinds of means and tools. “One encounters language only from within some particular language. For most of us, we are rooted in a ‘mother tongue’; at best, we have learned another ‘tongue’ but as one learns a language, that is to say, starting from a mother tongue and through translations. There are all the degrees from monolinguism tot polyglotism. The same thing is true for the comprehension of a religion which always begins from a ‘religion from within’. (…) And it is only little by little, by approximations, that one can understand a neighbouring confession and, through it, another that is close to it”.31

No religious values education without the perspective of meaning

What does this imply for an educational dealing with the dimension of meaning? First of all, it is clear that no single values education is possible without a perspective of meaning, which is to say without an anchoring of the event of education – both the action as well as the content – in a global and integrative horizon of meaning, whereby life and social life in this world receive their ‘true’ and ‘wholesome’ significance, notwithstanding all experiences of fragmentation, loss of meaning and absurdity.32 We not only need cordial affection and love (emotionality), not only objectivity of reasonableness with its moral rules of the game (rationality), but also an integrative perspective wherein existence acquires its significance and carrying power, and also its symbolic expression and mode of experience. People want to know what and who do they finally live for, or if their lives have a ‘purpose’, or if it all was worth it in the end. Religion, in my case the Christian faith, proceeds from the conviction that ‘in spite of it all’ life acquires meaning, and that this meaning does not primarily ensue from oneself but is ‘proffered’ to us as a gratuitous gift, which we actually cannot ‘deserve’ – not even by our ‘best works’ – but can only be given to us as a superabundant grace. 33 With Paul Ricoeur we can link this with the anteriority, exteriority and superiority34 of every religious faith and profession: “I can also understand the triangle of so-called monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as the religions without God, such as Buddhism, which I term religious because one finds there the reference to an anteriority, an exteriority, and a superiority – these three notions being constitutive of the manner in which I am preceded in the world of meaning”.35 This heteronomous meaning situates and anchors our personal identity and existence in a greater, more embracing wholeness, not only transcending but also redeeming and healing, fulfilling our finite and wounded self. 31 P. RICOEUR, Critique and conviction. Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 169. 32 F. VON KUTSCHERA, Die grossen Fragen. Philosophisch-theologische Gedanken, Berlin/New York, 2000, pp. 83-84. 33 P. RICOEUR, The Just, Chjicago/london, 2000, pp. 144-145. 34 P. RICOEUR, Critique and conviction. Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 99-100, 101. 35 Ibid., pp. 169-170. 17

An associating and emotionally involved, sensitive God

It is important that we first explain theologically this fundamental thesis, before linking them to educational perspectives. For that purpose, as a Christian I must start with the core of Jesus’ message, wherein God himself takes central stage. What is immediately notable is that Jesus never speaks about God in a non-committal way. Neither does he speak of God as a kind of neutral, ontological datum or an indifferent ‘fact of being’ amidst many other beings. He always speaks about God in a well-defined way, namely by linking God to the idea of kingship and lordship (‘the Kingdom of God’).36 And he then ascribes a paradoxical significance to this lordship by turning it around, as it were, and linking it with a serving and liberating approach to people. By means of this ethical ‘Umwertung’ of the power category ‘lordship’, Jesus announces no high and mighty, majestic and powerful God who arbitrarily ‘sets his foot down on the world’, but rather a God who comes near and who precisely discards His ‘tremendous majesty’ and binds Himself with ‘the poor, the weeping, the hungry, the crushed’ (cf. the Beatitudes). Thus Jesus proclaims a humanely kind and merciful God. He talks about how God can take place among people and not about how God is in an abstract heaven or in His own essence. It is apparent from this that Jesus qualifies God with ethical terms, and not with merely descriptive, distant ontological terms. This ethical description is entirely not abstract. God is not formulated in terms of alienating, theoretical and ‘metaphysical’ categories or principles. God is always Someone, a You, a ‘person’, which is understood as merciful and loving. He is touched by what concerns and happens to people.37 This implies that God is also sensitive and moved, and this in His deepest being. We can also call this the ‘sensitivity’ of God insofar as He is no abstract-philosophical, or necessary principle of explanation, but a living Someone who in His ‘heart’, unto ‘the marrow of His bones’, is moved by what people go through in their history.38 In biblical language, God is never presented as an ‘unmoved Mover’ (Aristotle). The concept of unmoved mover evokes, surely when it is used in a rather deistic frame of thought, the position of an outsider who looks upon how the clock ticks which he himself has set in motion and which no longer concerns him further. On the contrary, God is presented in the Bible as someone who is essentially involved with people and the world. We can therefore better call Him a ‘moved Mover’. And this involvement of God is understood emotionally, which we express in all too human and thus carefully employed terms. God becomes sad; He suffers and feels pain in His belly by the suffering of people. His is affected by what happens. In this sense, the biblical God is not a static but a dynamic God, who is ‘moved’ precisely because He can be touched by what takes place among people, literally by their history. God is no inaccessible and indifferent being, but literally the ‘non-indifferent one’, and that is precisely His ethical being whereby He is ‘movable’ and ‘touched’, ‘involved’, ‘affected’ and vulnerable by what concerns people. When the Christian tradition says that God is love, then it says that God is no unapproachable absolute principle – a tailpiece of one or the other logical reasoning – but that His is an utterly open and involved Someone, with a ‘heart of

36 H. MERKLEIN, Die Gottesherrschaft als Handlungsprinzip. Untersuchungen zur Ethik Jesu, Würzburg, 1981 (2th ed.), p. 17-45; G.R. BEASLEY-MURRAY, ‘Matthew: 6:33: The Kingdom of God and the Ethics of Jesus. “Seek his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be added to you”’, in: H. MERKLEIN (ed.), Neues Testament und Ethik, Freiburg/Basel/Wien, 1989, pp. 84-98. 37 G. BAUDLER, El Jahwe Abba. Wie die Bibel Gott versteht, Düsseldorf, 1996, pp. 129-229; ID., ‘El – Jahwe – Abba. Plaidoyer pour une compréhension historico-dynamique (biblique) de Dieu des religions héritières d’Abraham’, in: Lumen Vitae, 54(1999), n. 1, pp. 21-32. 38 P. RICOEUR, ‘La révélation des révélations’, in: A. LACOCQUE & P. RICOEUR, Penser la bible, Paris, 1998, pp. 305-371. 18 flesh’, who is moved in His ‘gut’ by what happens to His people and the whole of his creation. The biblical God is indeed, as Pascal once said, ‘not the God of philosophers and the learned, but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, the God of Jesus of Nazareth, a God of heart and blood, of soul and body, in which He not only shows, but also is, His ‘sensitivity’.39 It is then not accidental or pure coincidence that Christianity has so radically continued and ‘perfected’ the Old Testament message of God’s involvement, as we encounter this in ‘Moses and the prophets’, that God has become ‘flesh’ in the human person Jesus of Nazareth. This implies that we should not understand the incarnation as a mere ontological structure of a Being, be it even the Highest Being, that appears in a finite being. This concerns an ethically qualified God, a God who is love, who takes place in and through the human-being of Jesus. In Jesus the biblical God has fully become what He was and is: the utter positivity of love. This also means that the human-being of Jesus should just as less be understood as an objectively datum amidst other data. This concerns the lived-through and exercised human-being of Jesus; it concerns the humanity of his being-human, whereby his humanness is impregnated and characterised with an ethical quality. It is but only in and through the loving, liberating grace-filled life and action of Jesus that God becomes visible and tangible. The human-being of Jesus cannot fully reveal God as love, detached from Jesus’ ethical quality, namely his involvement in flesh and blood in the healing and salvation of people. Only his concrete and bodily praxis of liberating grace and goodness makes the biblical God of love felt and real. In this regard, the flesh is the revelation of the spirit. The Word has become flesh, says John in his gospel (Jn 1,14). When we therefore want to know something about the Word, about God, then we must look to the flesh, the bodily person Jesus. The flesh reveals the Spirit, or stronger still, the flesh is the Spirit! From this we likewise note a remarkable, even paradoxical, reality, namely God’s grace for us is at the same time God’s ethics. What we experience as God’s grace is, seen from the standpoint of God, his ethical mode of existence. Or to put it paradoxically: God’s grace for us is his ethics. In this sense, his grace and ethics are intimately linked to each other in Christianity. When we speak of God’s grace, then we inadvertently characterise it in terms of ethical value: God is benevolent, merciful, loving, just, true, forgiving God’s grace is not arbitrary, it cannot just be whatsoever, for instance both a square circle or one or the other mysterious ‘trick’, and still less a form of sadistic pleasure, hate or revenge God is no voluntaristic God who just lets things simply happen to people, who would have nothing to do with the ‘good’, but who would only be a form of game of chance , of ‘fortune’ or ‘fate’ (‘luck’ or ‘bad luck’, as they are commonly called). On the contrary, God’s grace is nothing else than the gratuitous and abundant goodness towards people, that can only be expressed in ethically qualified terms. Grace in the Christian sense is the ‘goodness and love of God towards people’, who has appeared on earth in Jesus (Tit 3,4). It is clear that here the term ‘ethics’ should not only be understood in a minimalist sense, namely as an indication of what must, or rather of what should not. This is also called the normative level in ethics, in the sense that who does not keep the commandment or transgresses the prohibition ends up in the inhuman. We make use of the term ethics rather in the sense of ‘ethical excellence’. Concretely, this concerns the ethical excellence of love. On the basis of an internal longing, which we can also label as a must, but then as an internal must that is laid in the dynamism of love itself, love realises itself as ‘a love that is never love

39 E. LEVINAS, Transcendance et intelligibilité. Suivi d’un entretien, Genève, 1984, pp. 56-61 ; ID., Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre, Paris, 1991, pp. 69-76 ; ID., Of God who come to mind, Stanford (California), 1998, pp. 62-75. 19 enough’. Love lives out of a inner fullness that wants to give of itself even more. Love fulfils itself as the surpassing of love itself. It is then not coincidental that this abundant quality of love was and is characterised in the Christian tradition with the term ‘agapè’. Well then, Christians describe God precisely with this term of ethical excellence that, whereby God for them is at the same time grace and blessing.40 God’s love is characterised by an unending goodness, mercifulness, patience, fidelity against all infidelity, which even surpasses all human ethical excellence by far. The blessing of this love that comes upon us undeservedly is the ethical life of God, which indeed cannot be described in strict normative terms, but only in images and forms of abundant, ‘unimaginable’ goodness. This love and goodness display the highest moral quality, which depicts the very being of God. God is no capricious fate, from whom both good and evil equally or arbitrarily flow forth. On the contrary, He is nothing but ethical goodness, and moreover only an ethical excellence. God cannot be violence, hate, lies, humiliation or infidelity, these are also the normative boundaries that depict God, but in His ethical quality He is furthermore characterised by an unsurpassed ethical excellence which cannot be enforced or measured by any single normative ethical system. It is precisely this ethical ‘exuberance’ that immediately brought the first Christian theology (of John and Paul) to identify God with love itself ‘God is love’, in the sense that God – in Christ – has given Himself when we were still sinners (Rom 5,8) and thus could not claim merits or ‘rights’. Augustine continues along this line when he makes this ‘ethics of disproportionate abundance’ the core of his image of the grace-filled and blessing God: ‘God is love’, and vice-versa: ‘love is God’, whereby love is understood precisely in its immeasurable abundance and qualitative ‘unendingness’. This is the paradox of the Christian theology of grace: God’s ethical excellence is the ‘fortune’, the grace and the blessing whereby we live.

Trans-ethical meaning and religious education

For religious education, which needs courage in order to not remain at the level of social- ethical projects (in the line of the new social movements on the environment, peace, third and fourth worlds, and others), it is important to connect with the ‘trans-ethical’ dimension of grace of the Christian faith just sketched. In other words, it is not because God is qualified in ethical terms, and that ethics essentially counts as the mediation and criterion for authenticity of the profession of faith in God (cf. supra), that this would imply a reduction of faith to ethics. On the contrary, the ethical qualification rightly makes clear the literally ‘extra- ordinary’ dynamism of God’s grace as ‘love and nothing else’. The Christian faith is irreducible to its ethics; it is based fundamentally, primarily and ultimately, on an offer of grace and salvation, that in terms of their content cannot be represented in other terms than those of the ethical excellence of love. The Christian faith in the first place is not our task towards the love of neighbour (ethical praxis), and not even our task towards the love of God (mystical praxis), but the revelation and realisation of God’s love towards us. The core of the Judaeo-Christian faith is ‘to be able to learn and experience’ that there is Someone – no anonymous, impartial force or energy, but a Person – who unconditionally accompanies us in our exodus and journey through the desert, for He has first loved us ( 1 Jn 4,19), when we were still sinners, thus without any merits or rights from our side. Jesus has embodied in a definitive and unique way the revelation of God’s name to Moses – ‘I will be with you, I

40 For a further reflection on divine and religious blessing, see: J. POHIER, ‘The Power of Blessing over Psychic Identity’ (Interview with Françoise Dolto), in: Concilium 178 (1985) n. 2, pp. 81-95, esp. 81-84, 86-87, 87-88; D. GREINER, Segen und Segnen. Eine systematisch-theologische Grundlegung, Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln, 1998, pp. 9-17, 24-42, 187-205, 266-355. 20 shall accompany you’ – and, in so doing, revealed it. God’s love not only has the first, but also the last word. Namely the word of fulfilment and salvation. In a special way the biblical profession of faith in God implies the trans-ethical perspective of forgiveness, reparation and reconciliation, whereby the great problems of shortcoming and guilt, acquire no ‘solution’ but rather an ‘answer’. Christian religion, as every monotheistic religion, acknowledges the good and the unsolvable contradiction between good and evil, without embarking upon rational understanding, it also tries to speak the language of comfort, forgiveness and salvation, without having another remedy for it. In other words, in authentic religious life a dimension is present which cannot be offered in any assistance or social action, however important this deductive, therapeutic and healing task of assistance may be. The religious gift of forgiveness and reconciliation flows directly forth from God’s mercy. Its power can be demonstrated on the basis of the etymological root of the biblical concept of mercy. The Hebrew word for mercy (‘ruchama’) goes back to the root word ‘rechem’, which literally means the womb. And when the Rabbinic tradition searches for the meaning of the womb, they do not give a medical or scientific-problematical definition, but the deeper lying ‘mystery’ opened up by the meaning of the womb. According to this thoroughly reflective tradition, the womb is ‘that which is only there in order to bear the other than itself, until it is born’. Mercy is motherhood itself as ‘being through and for the other’, not in a spiritual but in a bodily sense, or rather in a very corporeal sense and thereby precisely in a spiritual sense. Mercy can then be described as the blessing of ‘ethical motherhood’, in the sense that the other is literally brought upon us or given over to us, so that we are wrapped up in the other because the other is present in us. Applied to God, this means that the Bible understands God’s mercy as motherhood, meaning to say as ‘being for the other’, as ‘being wrapped up’ with the other or literally bearing the other in oneself in order to give him or her life. This reveals in an eminent way the ‘sensitivity’ of God sketched above, who is not only really touched by the weal and woe that happens to people, but also is essentially ‘touchable’ and thus in His divine being itself is involved and tuned in to the other than itself, in which His divinity precisely lies.41 This revelation and promise of an unconditional Presence, namely that Someone is near to us in all circumstances and never leaves us, that there is and will be always Someone to whom we can entrust ourselves, not only provides the ground and future of existence but of all education. How can a values education that doesn’t transcend an ethics of the active performance and responsibility of the human person cope with the great questions of life like origin of life, suffering and death, failure and guilt, unless it ‘raises’ its project to a religious dimension where precisely these ‘trans-ethical’ questions of life acquire a perspective that provides a supporting ground and meaning. It is this dimension of transcendent meaning, to which a Christian inspired education, which aims at integral and thus not only psychological but also spiritual well-being, must be and remain sensitive, in order at the proper moment to be able to refer – discretely but not ashamedly – to the religious space that lies beyond human possibilities, or rather to the trans-human space of God’s creational, liberating, redeeming and restoring love. Teachers of religious education should certainly not block the way towards it, but on the contrary explicitly keep it open – without intrusiveness or dogmatism – and present it as a possibility that can be freely chosen, if they want to remain worthy of the character of a religious, in casu Christian inspired values education.42 41 F. DE LANGE, ‘Room for forgiveness? A theological perspective’, in: D. POLLEFEYT (ed.), Incredible forgiveness. Christian ethics between fanaticism and reconciliation, Leuven, 2004, 161-182, especially pp.167- 172. 42 J. MONBOURQUETTE, How to forgive. A step-by-step guide, Ottawa/London, 2000, pp. 167-176; ID., ‘The integral forgiveness: healing, forgiveness and reconciliation’, in: D. POLLEFEYT (ed.), Incredible forgiveness. Christian ethics between fanaticism and reconciliation, Leuven, 2004, 183-197, especially pp. 187-193. 21 That is why it will also be educationally important to bring this Christian ‘mystery of meaningfulness’ near in different concrete forms and ways. With that, the discursive and reflexive should surely not be absent, since conversations and discussions about the ‘sense and nonsense’ of life, work, responsibility and solidarity, about guilt and failure, suffering, death and the after-life open up the possibility to a personal conviction and deepening of faith. Yet one will not fail to disclose that such discussions on the basis of arguments and reasons can never be enough, precisely because the ultimate, sustaining ‘meaning’ is not only a house or a ‘home’ to live in but also remains a ‘mystery’ and thus cognitively can never be graspable and understandable integrally. If this were indeed so, a religious, in my case the Christian, mystery of meaning would be transformed into a ‘grand ideological narrative’ to which the so-called post-modern though would rightly aim its razor-sharp criticism. Moreover, the access to a religious or a Christian mystery of meaningfulness should never remain at a reflexive level or in the first place be reduced to a reasonable (theological) argument; it must especially come to life and be experienced. That is why educationally one will also have to make the Christian mystery of meaning present for experience in forms and shapes sufficiently accessible to children and young people, without adjusting the religious, in casu Christian mystery entirely and without restriction to their longings and taste. In order not to overwhelm them, it is appropriate not only to introduce them to the important symbolic and ritual forms, expressions and actions of meaning from the tradition, for example postures of praying like kneeling, bowing, joining one’s hands, objects like candles, cross, statues, images, rituals like blessings and sacraments,43 but also to search for small, very concrete

43 Baptism for example is a ritual of initiation or origin that in a symbolic manner effects what it signifies (brings in signs): it takes up a person into the sheltering mystery of the ‘founding’ divine blessing, meaning to say, it binds him or her with an indelible blessing which he or she can count on. From the moment that someone is baptised, he or she can count on it as an unshakeable support, however difficult the circumstances of life may be. That a person can count on this is thus the promise ‘from God’ that makes up the core of baptism. Because I am baptised there is something indestructible in the self-confidence that I am allowed to have, because God has had such confidence in me that He has bonded me with all other Christians, present, past and future, in one grand, integrating and sheltering chain. Baptism blesses people into unique, chosen beings, upon whom an unshakeable promise of salvation, healing and perfection from God is pronounced: ‘See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands’ (Isa 49,16). Two matters can be noticed here. First it says: ‘I have written you – yourself – on the palms of my hands’, which is thus stronger than only one or the other ‘derived’ or secondary substitution, representation or reference. Moreover, it does not say ‘written’ but ‘inscribed’, ‘graven’. God has graven on the palms of His hands the human person himself or herself, not in general but personalised, as an addressed ‘you’, that he or she can no longer be erased from them. I am indelibly burnt in, like an ‘eternal label’, or like a ‘divine tattoo’ to put it in contemporary, perhaps rather disrespectful, but nonetheless eloquent words, which can no longer be effaced even with the best laser technologies. It is thus not coincidental that the giving of the name in baptism takes an important place, or rather even begins with it, because first the name must be given so that the baptism, by means of an address, can take place not to a person in general but to someone with a name and surname. We know from the biblical tradition how important names and name-giving are. The name is not so much a secondary derivation, but it stands for the person himself or herself in all their concrete uniqueness. Further, this is about ‘one’s own name’ and not about a ‘generic name’, which is still a general denominator under which people are brought together in comparable units. Our own name is not so much a message about who we are, but is a performative word: by means of pronouncing one’s own name, we are ‘nominated’ and ‘raised’ to a unique person. Our own name is not so much a label on a bottle in order to know its contents, but is itself a creative form of personification. That is why one’s own name is also a precious possession. By means of pronouncing one’s own name, the irreducible mystery of his or her being-person is proclaimed, appointed and indicated. To ascribe one’s own name implies that each person is ‘individual’ and ‘exceptional’, irreducible to their functions, significance and contribution in the relational and social network: ‘you and no one else’, non-exchangeably, are worth all respect and protection. It need not be argued that the name and the use of the personal name in education is not only ‘interesting’ and ‘worth recommending’, but also simply fundamental to a qualitative, ‘meaning-giving’ education. To know the name of someone and to address people with that name ‘founds’ a humane, qualitative relationship, based on a felt respect and attention. In extension, every personalisation in education must be emphasised, meaning to say the approach of education in 22 forms and ‘expressions of meaning’ wherein they can personally feel involved by the contribution of their own experience and active participation. This is connected after all to the essential character of the Christian mystery of meaningfulness itself, and I think of alle mysteries of religious confessions. Due to its depth and ultimate significance and due to our mortality, this ‘great mystery’ can never be instantly experienced and expressed in its unfathomable and inexhaustible totality. This implies the challenge in religious education not only to pay attention to the initiation in the traditional symbolism and in liturgical and sacramental rituality but also to search for new ways of all sorts of partial, expressive and attractive ‘forms of meaning’ which in the Catholic tradition are called ‘sacramentals’ (‘sacramentalia’).

Interchange between grace and ethics

From these considerations concerning the divine original and final love (‘alpha and omega’), it turns out once again, just as we already stated, that in the biblical and Christian faith, grace is unambiguously formulated in ethical terms, but then in trans-normative terms. Thus the bible speaks about a loving, life-giving, moved by a liberating and forgiving, merciful God. These are terms of ethical excellence. These terms thus have nothing to do with porridge that is eaten with golden spoons. This is fundamentally about grace as liberation and healing, as being able to come home, as being able to be yourself and the fullness of life, not to be kept for yourself but to be given to others. This grace comes upon us thanks to the fact that Someone else moves and touches us therein. Now, it is remarkable that according to the Christian tradition and experience, the human person is not only capable of being ethically excellent thanks to the ethical excellence of the divine Other-unexpected-Near-One, but that the human person by means of that divine grace, that affects and transforms us through different symbolic forms and ritual expressions, is also appealed to be ethically excellent. The divine loving – a logic of superabundant blessing44 - not only enables the human person himself to love, but this grace which comes to us from God means an inspiration and an appeal to loving. This is the fundamental coherence between meaning and ethics in a Christian religiosity. In Christian faith, one can never speak about ethics if one first of all does not speak about God. God is, after all, formulated in terms of ethical excellence, as we saw above. These qualitative ethical terms are precisely the terms of grace that comes upon us. Hence, there exists in Christian faith a very deep coherence between ethics and faith in God. One cannot have faith in the God of the Bible, who is concerned with ‘the poor, the orphan and the widow’, without oneself taking steps towards the vulnerable other, who appeals u through his naked face (cf. supra). When we stand in religious faith, we cannot simply believe in the awareness that we are blessed by Someone else, without participating in it. In faith, we are invited and appealed to also become blessing and grace for others. The grace that comes upon us, arouses in us the appeal to become ourselves grace for others, and this not in a minimalist but in a creative and enthusiastic, self-surpassing manner. Or to say it in another way, the divine emotionality appeals and inspires us to take care of other people and of the whole creation.

their unique being-person, above all ‘collectivisation’, that means reduction of persons to any form of social, economic, juridical, political, religious totality 44 P. RICOEUR, The Just, Chicago/London, 2000, p. 144. 23 Conclusion

Looking back at the path we have traversed from our considerations on the dimension of meaning in religious, in casu Christian faith,, it becomes clear how this perspective of meaning, that precedes ethics as its ground and also follows it as its future, in return refers to the first dimension of education, emotionality. Both emotionality as well as religious faith mean source of security, solidarity and becoming whole. Therefore, Christian inspired education must first of all offer the blessing of a confirming nearness, whereby children and young people feel themselves secure without being locked up (dimension of emotionality). As inclusion both, emotionality and divine grace, encompass ethics. By means of the deeply gripping emotion of the divine loving grace, ethics is made possible as the appeal to and the practice of loving . The emotionality of being loved arouses the longing to act oneself in a loving manner. So that human existence would truly be loving, the question on orientating guidelines arises. From the second aspect of rationality, it was made clear how especially boundary lines and conditions, namely prohibitions, are indicated, rather than positive, prescriptive behavioural norms. By means of these prohibitions, the space is created for a free and creative shaping of a loving lifestyle and behaviour that gives life, creates trust, respects the uniqueness of each person and makes faithfulness possible. And through the mystery of meaning that the Christian religious faith presents, both the grace of loving that comes to us as well as the mission of loving that we ourselves must carry out acquire a surpassing and ultimately sustaining ground and future. From the biblical God of love, who blesses our lives in its origin, course and perfection, human belongingness and commitment acquire their full meaning and eschatological or ultimate value. Hence, it is an essential task for every religious, in casu Christian values education to bind human emotionality and divine grace to each other, so that on the one hand the explicit religious or faith education does not miss its human being rooted and that on the other hand human involvement and commonality do not lose their religious dynamism, that means their ultimate, divine perspective.

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