Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I
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Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I. Culture and Values, Volume 38 General Editor George F. McLean Religion and Culture by George F. McLean The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2010 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication McLean, George F. Religion and culture / by George F. McLean. p. cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I, Culture and values ; v. 38) Includes index. 1. Religion and culture. I. Title. II. Series. BL65.C8M3655 200 2008024409 201'.7—dc22 CIP ISBN 978-1-56518-256-1 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword v John P. Hogan Introduction 1 Part I. The Conjoint Discovery of the Human Person and God Chapter I. The Person and Moral Growth 5 Chapter II. The Transcendent as Basis of Personal Dignity and 33 Social Development Part II. The Emergence of Subjectivity as Interior Awareness of the Life of Man in God Chapter III. Culture and the Rediscovery of God Immanent 63 in Human Freedom: From Object to Subject Chapter IV. The Divine as Ground of Being and Ultimate Concern: 83 A Phenomenology of Good and Evil Part III. Religion as the Life of Culture Chapter V. Religion and the Meaning of Culture 115 Chapter VI. Religion and a Wholistic Paradigm for Global Times 139 Chapter VII. Person as Gift of God: From Love to Global Peace 163 Index 179 FOREWORD THE PHILOSOPHER’S CALLING The present work, Religion and Culture, in many ways, sums up the long philosophical calling of George McLean. The life work of this 80 year young philosopher-hermeneut-priest provides a template for the changes that have taken place in twentieth and twenty-first century philosophical reflection, and augurs further changes still to come. Indeed, the 200 plus volumes of the series, “Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change,” of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, provides a whole library on recent issues in Philosophy: philosophy emerging from culture, globalization, technology, the reconstruction of civil society, the clash and/or convergence of world religions, and the growing global interaction of the sacred and the secular. McLean has been not only the General Editor of this multifaceted series but also, and more importantly, mentor and motivator of the contributors, mainly young philosophers from around the world. He is the behind the scene architect and pied-piper, as well as tireless workhorse, of a global movement of “philosophies emerging from local cultures.” His manner of philosophical leadership, as this volume illustrates, has had more to do with questions, research and dialogue, than with answers, arguments, and systems. He looks for resources of the spirit, and deep insight and motivation. These provide the means for enlightened, free and responsible decision making opening a path forward. This volume mirrors some of the great changes in Philosophy and the unfolding dimensions of McLean’s own approach. It exemplifies his life-long fascination, not only with western philosophy, both classical and modern, but his long involvement with Indian, Chinese and Islamic thought. The new century has seen an intensification of cultural awareness which has generated positive interest in one’s own cultural identity and hopefully mutual enrichment from other cultures. However, this new awareness, as McLean has indicated, has generated also negative and violent cultural imperialisms “which deepen the vortex of fundamentalisms, one radicalizing the other in a pattern of mutual fear, defense and rejection.” These parallel but opposed fundamentalisms have influenced all forms of religious, cultural, social, political, and economic interaction. The long-range strategy of McLean’s corpus might be summed up in the question: how might Philosophy help to elevate thought, clarify basic issues, and enable people to dialogue within and across cultures in order to work for the common good? This is what this volume is about. Professor McLean begins by seeking an enrichment of classical objective knowledge with a new awareness of human subjectivity, self-awareness and freedom. From there he moves to a discussion of person and human consciousness as mapped vi Foreword out along the path of values and virtues honed by cultures and traditions but always freely open to the attraction, at once both imminent and transcendent—to unity—and the true, the good, and the beautiful. As the road is full of potholes and contradictions which cannot be avoided, the “ultimate concern of human life” must burst forth from the dialectic of good and evil. In this way Religion emerges as the root of cultures and traditions which each people have shaped in their own way through their own sacrifice and creativity. Nonetheless, building on Tillich and Gadamer, McLean maintains that culture and tradition should not be viewed as straightjackets, but rather blueprints for freedom and transcendence. He readily endorses Pelican’s famous quote, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Hence digging into our traditions should not turn us in on ourselves, but rather should open to the “other” and to intercultural understanding and cooperation. A shared life of philosophy identifies basic polarities: life as good; life become destructive; and life reconciled. Metaphysics sees these as stages: essence or nature; existence; and “their reconciliation in a dynamic harmony of being.” Christians would describe this dialectic as: life as gift (paradise); life as fallen (sin/death); and new life as redeemed (resurrection). We can only be grateful for the broad vision presented here. Professor McLean brings together whole traditions, eastern and western, and shows us a path through the battlefields of current prejudice and violence. He readily calls upon old friends to help map the arduous journey: Nicholas of Cusa, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Cornelio Fabro, Paul Tillich, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Karol Wojtyla, among others. Philosophy is a calling to define and describe, to get to the root of the question, to interpret and bring into harmony. Most importantly, the calling includes the priestly role of mediating meaning—from gods to men and thence to God, the One. Philosopher, hermeneut, priest—George McLean fills all these roles with this volume. He is a sage guide whose philosophy both elevates thought and adds the practical dimension of contributing to the common good in this new global age. John P. Hogan INTRODUCTION For Cicero culture was the manner of cultivating the human soul. He reasoned that just as a field left untended becomes a useless weedpatch, so the human soul without care and education degenerates from its true dignity. In his day it was, moreover, unthinkable that this cultivation of the soul could be a merely human matter for life and culture had, of necessity, a transcendent context. With the origin of modern times—and even as its essence—the focus of human concern shifted from God to man who became the center and norm of all things. Much indeed has been accomplished through subjecting nature and forcing it to serve human ends. The present population of the world could hardly survive without the scientific, technological, and industrial means that this focus upon human implementation has produced. Yet there are reasons to wonder whether this is now an adequate context, for all has not been well with the world. Indeed, the recent 20th century proved to be the bloodiest of them all and the violence of this first decade of the 21st century suggests that the new millennium could be marked not by human progress but by human conflict. The challenges here are multiple and interlocking. First, it is with the products of an increasingly broader range of peoples that we now feed and cloth ourselves, and supply our energy needs for transportation and industry. In answering these needs we have overcome the physical barrier of time and place and interact on a truly global scale. Truly we now live, and must be able to cooperate with others, on the world stage of commerce and communication. Second and in many ways more importantly, such physical or external interaction now challenges our inner self-conscious and the self- identity we freely construct. We are born into a language and culture as a specific set of values and virtues which reflects the cumulative life experience of our people. This is a culture in Cicero’s sense. Today as we interact with an ever expanding range of peoples this identity is continually buffeted by an ever expanding range of discrete cultures. Fortunately, these cultures, and more broadly the mega civilizations they constitute, share a similar structure being layered from their more surface and diverse characteristics to their religions. These are their deepest, most penetrating self-understandings and the ultimate commitments which shape their mode of life. Hence, today, religion has become a matter of the most urgent attention as key to the ability to live together in our global times. This is no longer only a fixed body of teachings and practice taken objectively, but especially also the way these are understood and lived interiorly or subjectively, personally and socially, and engender a culture or way of life. This is the lived reality, the way people engage their environment, interact socially and respond to God, not only as origin and end, but as provident guide who motivates and enables 2 Introduction their every action. While unique in mode to each culture, this is their shared striving to live in the image of the divine. The concern of the present work is to study the development of religion as this understanding and living of the relation of the human to the divine.