Ethics and The Discernment of Spirits1

Garrett Barden

William Desmond is a deeply rooted thinker The second is that sometimes one dis- whose work exhibits not only the universal covers that the fulfilment of what one has taken to rhetoric of analysis but also, and quite openly, the be one’s present desire leaves one dissatisfied; local and personal rhetoric of living. I have tried leaves one with the sense of unexpected incom- here to honour that complex rhetorical intertwin- pleteness; with a dimly felt hunger. But here, too, ing by a reflection on St. Ignatius of Loyola whose in the sense of inadequacy, desire remains as a cri- influence on me has been and remains, I think, terion; one has not yet found one’s heart’s desire. greater and more obscure than I know. What There is a temptation entirely to repudiate Ignatius calls the discernment of spirits I call here desire as a criterion of the good in favour of some the discrimination of desires. naturally known explicit set of that My theme is that the great philosophers of the would define the good and from which other spec- moral life have, in very different ways, spoken of ifications of the good could be deduced. This is the same experience, the experience that led Kant the temptation of Pascal’s esprit de géométrie that to write in one breath of “the starry heavens above would discover ethical axioms whence ethical the- and the moral law within”2 and which for Ignatius orems could be deduced. The roots of this tempta- is the first practical fruit of his Spiritual Exercises. tion are deep in the Western mentality in which the The subtitle of this essay could well be: What is geometric method has been for centuries, even if Ethics and the Between about? no longer, the ideal of enquiry and the model of I begin by recalling what everyone knows, that rationality.3 from the outset it was feared that the good might There is a temptation entirely to repudiate be no more than a misleading name for the object desire as a criterion of the good in favour of some of present desire. But why fear this? Why not sim- analysis of human action that would show the con- ply accept that the good is no more than the name nection between the goodness of an action and the for whatever seems to each one to be what he now fundamental nature of that action. So, for exam- desires? There are two not to accept it. ple, that it is good to tell the and not to lie is The first is that when one claims that some- shown in analysis to be connected with the nature thing is good — for instance, that this particular of human conversation. And this is so. Human course of action is good or that, more generally, conversation can survive much deceit but it cannot this kind of action, say, truth-telling, is good — survive total deceit; truth-telling is intrinsic to it one discovers oneself to be going beyond the bare and lying undermines it. A question looks to the assertion that this now seems to fulfil my present true, not merely the convenient, answer. But why desire; one is not negating that assertion but one is should I, or anyone, tell the truth when, in the cir- going beyond it. There is an experiential reluc- cumstances, it would be more convenient for me tance to identify ‘the good’ with at least one of the to lie? The virtue of justice is intrinsic to contrac- ways in which the phrase ‘the object of my present tual exchange not an arbitrary moral addition to it desire’ is used. And yet ‘present desire’ is but why should I be just when it is more to my pre- involved. sent obvious advantage to defraud? These are not

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 254 questions about the character of the action but the phrase ‘true ’ is pleonastic such about the character of the actor and notice how, in that ‘true proposition’ means no more than ‘propo- the way that they are asked, they pit present desire sition’, it is also presupposed that propositions — understood as more or less immediate gratifi- may be other than true, that is, not true. One cation or convenience to me — against the inter- answer9 to the question as to what it means for a nal orientation or structure of conversation or con- proposition to be true is: A proposition states what tract.4 is the case and is true if and only if what it states And yet, again and again, the question of desire to be the case is in fact the case.10 (Accordingly, a recurs. Augustine’s “our hearts are restless until proposition is not true if and only if what it states they rest in Thee” is part of a theory of human to be the case is in fact not the case.11) This answer desire. Perhaps Augustine is mistaken; perhaps discovers a characteristic or feature of proposi- correct. Correct or mistaken, his hypothesis tions. It neither helps us nor pretends to help us to remains in the tradition and cannot honestly be distinguish between true and untrue propositions avoided although it can be, and often is, ignored. and it gives no indication as to how to go about Reflection on it can be postponed; perhaps indefi- discovering whether a given proposition is true or nitely. Augustine discovers the restlessness of the untrue. human heart — this is an experiential discovery5 Assume that the question as to what it means to — and asks in what it will rest. His hypothesis is be true is about friends. Again it is presupposed that it comes to rest in God, in the good.6 Here I that friends may be true or not true. But what kind want to attend to his discovery and to his question. of answer is anticipated? Perhaps something like We experience the finality7 of desire, the heart’s this: a true friend is one who acts towards his restlessness before we know where and how the friend in a certain way in certain situations. Notice heart will come to rest. William Desmond’s Ethics that if one is asked whether or not Peter is a true and the Between is, I think, an account of human friend one’s evidence for an affirmative answer is action that attempts to take account of the central- that he has acted in the past as a true friend. But the ity of desire. His question is: what does it mean to true friend is expected to act in the future as a true be good?8 I want to attend to what I take to be an friend. And we say that Peter is a true friend important element in his answer: to be good is to because he has acted as one in the past and because fulfil one’s heart’s desire. we expect him so to act in the future. Did we What does it mean to be good? To be good is to expect him not to act as a true friend in the future fulfil one’s heart’s desire. There are underlying we should rather say that he used to be a true friend presuppositions in both question and answer. but no longer is. Were we unsure about his future Compare: ‘what does it mean to be good?’ with responses we should incline to say that we were ‘what does it mean to be true?’ Consider the sec- now unsure whether or not he is still a true friend. ond of these. What is this question about? Sometimes the suspicion that he is no longer a true Propositions? Friends? To answer the question one friend casts doubt on the idea that he once was. must make some presupposition explicit. ‘True’ in Sometimes the evidence for his being a true friend ‘What does it mean to be a true proposition?’ is is in the present as when we experience him acting not used in the same way as it is in ‘What does it as a true friend, for example, we might hear him mean to be a true friend?’ The uses may well be defending his absent friend’s good name. This kind related but they are not identical. of answer, unlike the answer to the meaning of Assume that the question as to what it means to ‘true proposition’, tells what acts, or kinds of act, be true is about propositions. Now it is presup- count as the acts of a good friend. We tend to give posed that propositions may be true and, unless an incomplete list of these acts from which the

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 255 questioner gets the general idea of what it is to be In this light consider the definition of the virtue a good friend. In my example, the true friend acts of justice in Justinian’s Institutes, a definition that in a certain way (he defends his friend’s good has remained since then in Western jurisprudence: name) in certain circumstances (when doubt is cast justice is the constant and enduring willingness to upon his friend’s good name). The example is, as give to each what is due.12 “Justice” is a “constant all examples will be, cultural for it is in commu- and enduring willingness”. What is defined here is nites that these answers are developed and tested. a virtue, habit or orientation; the just person is one We may try to give an embracing and to that extent with that virtue, that habit, that orientation. The transcultural formula. Perhaps, a true friend is one willingness is also desire to ‘give what is due’ and who acts for his friend’s good. But, again, the this desire endures even when one does not know embracing formula does not help us distinguish a what is due; the desire to give to each what is due true form a false friend — for that we should have includes, then, the desire to discover what is due. to know what is ‘the friend’s good’ — and it gives What part, if any, does this desire play in the no indication as to how to go about the discovery discovery of what is just? More generally, what of the good. part, if any, does the desire to be good play in the What does it mean to be good? What is this discovery of what being good involves? And question about? People? Paintings? Roads? Here behind this question is another question, deeper, I it is about people, about men and women, about think, and more difficult: why would anyone ourselves. And what kind of answer do we desire to be good? expect? We expect, initially at least, a list of some If it be supposed — a supposition that is, of acts that a good person will do in certain circum- course, open to further questioning — that our stances. This is how we learn what ‘good’ means; desires are mutually antagonistic,13 the question as how the word — the idea — is used. And how it to why anyone would desire to be good becomes is used means how it is used in the community why would anyone desire to follow his ‘good’ into which we are born and educated. In this kind rather than his other desires? If there are antago- of definition, however, the ‘good’ is not, or at least nistic desires how is one to discern which is good not clearly, the object of desire. The just situation and which speciously so? How is one to discern is brought about when each has what is due; the what Marcus Aurelius writes of as our leading just person is one who, in the appropriate circum- power.14 stances, will act to bring this situation about. Here There are, then, three interwoven questions: what is just is defined independently of the just First, among my many conflicting desires, how am person’s desire. But is a person just simply I to discern which are good and which speciously because he acts to bring about what is just? so? Second, what part does the desire to be good Traditionally it has not always been thought so, play in the discovery of what is good? Third, why for it has been acknowledged that a person might would I desire to be good? well act to bring about a just situation in order, These are, as I understand it, questions central say, to ingratiate himself with someone who could to Ethics and the Between. I hope to throw an benefit him. I might, for example, return a lost oblique light on William Desmond’s work by try- object uniquely in the hope of a reward that was ing to deal with these questions through a reflection of greater benefit to me than the object itself. on St Ignatius Loyola’s rules for the discrimination Then, in Aristotle’s view, I should have done what of desires in his Spiritual Exercises.15 These rules is just but not acted justly. To act justly I must are in two groups, the first of fourteen, the second desire to bring about what is just simply because of eight rules. The full names of what I have called it is just. the rules for the discrimination of desires are:

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 256 First group (of fourteen rules)16: Rules for feel- accept — philosophically — more or less of ing and recognizing the different movements of Ignatius’s world. Furthermore, one’s answer to the soul in order to accept the good and to reject the question of God’s existence may reflect fully, the bad. openly and philosophically on one’s reading of St Second group (of eight rules): Rules on the Ignatius’s text. Or one may, in one’s treatment, same subject for the greater discernment of spirits. prescind from God’s existence. I do, as I have said, accept the exstence of God but I shall, for Ignatius wrote the Exercises in the first half of the the most part, try to take from the text a method sixteenth century. He began their composition of discernment and discrimination of desire that while on his great retreat at Manresa in 1523. is experientially discoverable and independent of They were not written to be read but, as Courel one’s acceptance of God’s existence and action says, “..pour aider, par un ensemble d’indications even if, in the final analysis, the non-existence of pratiques, ceux qui s’adonnent à une expérience God would render the experiential fact absurd.20 spirituelle déterminée.” 17 There is no attempt in I turn now to the first rule in the first group — the them to discuss philosophically or theologically only rule examined here: the context within which they are written and within which the user will follow them. Not only To those who go from mortal sin to mortal sin the are they Christian, they are Christian in the man- enemy suggests apparent pleasures. ner of sixteenth-century Spain. They fully accept He inclines them to imagine delights and sensual plea- not only the existence and activity of God in our sures, the better to maintain them and lives but also the existence and activity of good make them grow in their vices and sins. With these the and bad angels. The ‘spirits’ referred to in the title good spirit employs a different of the second group are these angels. Many pre- approach: he goads and eats into their conscience with sent day Christians, not to speak of others, may the natural law of reason. find it difficult or impossible to live with a world so understood. For many modern readers the context, vocabulary Philosophers have, I think, a further difficulty. and imagery are alien, even repellent. And yet, I The question as to whether or not God exists is a think the rule worthy of analysis. philosophical question; the question as to The Rules are written as practical guides for those whether or not ‘the Word became flesh’ is not.18 engaged in a particular spiritual exercise21: the Ignatius, therefore, writes within a world that a serious examination of their own lives with a view given philosopher may share but not qua philoso- to reordering them.22 The person to whom this rule pher. But there is a further and almost embarrass- is addressed is engaged in a lengthy meditative ing difficulty. Ignatius’s world includes not only examination of his life. In the course of that med- the incarnate God of Christian but also itation what that person experiences is an inner God. As is perfectly obvious and well known, conflict between good and evil. Ignatius here some philosophers think — as I do — that the interprets this experience of conflict as the work fact that God exists can be, and is, known philo- of the evil and good spirit23 but that religious or sophically while others are theoretical or practi- theological interpretation may be left aside for the cal agnostics or atheists. Otherwise expressed, to moment. The existential question remains: does the question, Does God exist?, some will answer someone, engaged in the lengthy meditative ‘Yes’, others ‘No’, others ‘This cannot be examination of his life, experience an inner con- known’, others ‘I don’t know’.19 Thus it follows flict between good and evil? The person engaged that different philosophers will be willing to in this examination is not asking whether he

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 257 should do this or that; his question is this: What questions. Ignatius’s rules are addressed to some- kind of person am I to be?24 The answer to this one who is engaged in asking them. A feature of question is a decision, not a proposition, although the “determinate spiritual exercise in which the it must pass through a proposition. person for whom the exercises are written”30 is that This rule speaks of those who “go from mortal it includes this question. Seriously to ask oneself sin to mortal sin”. The interpretation is theologi- about one’s way of life is a spiritual exercise as cal. Many, simply because it is theological, may St. Ignatius understood it. It were a disastrous find it impenetrable or rebarbative. Shorn of its error to understand St. Ignatius here as leading the theological language, the text refers to those who participant to a grasp of a manual of rules. This are immersed in recurrent and serious evil. would be much more than to miss his central Richard Rorty has written of the torturer to whom point; it would be completely to subvert it. The no successful appeal can be made but this prag- participant is to become a person who will sponta- matic fact — and it is, I believe, a pragmatic not a neously act in a certain way. The Exercises are an structural fact25 — does not at all gainsay the evil education of spontaneity and so dangerous. The in which the torturer is immersed. Indeed, the temptation to revert to rules and manuals is great.31 example of the torturer is significant only to the The deep spontaneity of action is, however, present reader who thinks that the torturer is immersed in in the tradition: the virtuous action is the sponta- evil. A reader for whom torture is simply a more neous action of the virtuous actor. Ama et fac quod or less successful means to a given end, a means vis. without inner character, as it were, will not under- A person who ask what he is to be and whose stand this. way of life is seriously flawed will be assailed on It is, of course, patently true that appeals to the one hand by beguiling images tempting him to someone’s ‘better nature’ may be unsuccessful. To continue in his ways — one whose riches flow the torturer to continue in his work seems good. from fraud will be inclined to persist in his fraud The terrorist understands himself to be engaged in — but, on the other hand, the evils of fraud will noble and heroic actions; his opponent under- trouble him and undermine his ease. The person so stands these actions differently.26 Ignatius thinks engaged will experience a tension within himself that it is possible — neither easy nor automatic but that Ignatius thinks of as an uneasy or troubled still possible — to characterize an action correctly pleasure. independently of the actor’s own opinion. This It is important to stress that Ignatius is here possibility rests upon the presupposition that describing one engaged in a specific exercise actions are good or evil independently of the guided by the question as to whether or not his actor’s opinion.27 way of life is good or evil. The bustle of everyday But notice that the fundamental issue is not that can, of course, suppress this experience of trou- one person may correctly judge another’s actions. bled pleasure. Rorty is right to say that on the Rather what is fundamental is that one raises ques- whole it is useless to appeal to the torturer because tions about the goodness or evil of one’s own that torturer is not now engaged in the potentially proposed actions. More generally, one can raise disturbing spiritual exercise. When someone ego- questions about the character of one’s own way of tistically given to the pursuit of his own benefit is life.28 Those questions throw one’s whole life in all about to embark on a project that, he thinks, will its concreteness into focus and for this reason bring him great advantage and that he can get William Desmond’s work is full of detailed philo- away with, it is not the opportune moment to ask sophical, not simply anthropological, examinations him to consider the effect on others. But if one of ordinary living.29 One can, of course, avoid such tries to do so the often angry and blustering

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 258 response indicates a troubled conscience, a dis- is an expression of an understanding of the experi- ease within. ence and that understanding may be seriously mis- The inner tension that Ignatius refers to and taken. But moral experience itself is neither correct that he attributes to the conflicting promptings of nor incorrect; it is quite simply experience.44 the evil and the good spirit emerges into con- Moral experience is, however, differentiated. sciousness in the time of the exercise. It can The question as to what to do, the consideration of emerge at other times — randomly or providen- courses of action, decision and choice are funda- tially32 — but the exercise prepares for its emer- mental elements in moral experience. Everyone gence.33 asks moral questions, considers options, chooses Ignatius writes that the “good spirit goads and between them and decides. But the seriousness eats into their conscience with the natural law of with which all this is done varies. The guest in a reason”.34 What is this “natural law of reason”? restaurant asks what he is to eat, considers the Many have tried to say what it is. There has been options on the menu, chooses and decides. He dispute.35 It might be better to think of those who may do this carefully and painstakingly or rapidly write of it as trying in very different, and some- and somewhat indifferently.45 But although he is times apparently opposed ways, to describe an engaged in moral action he is not now engaged in experience. When writes of the Good in as the deep46 moral experience that St Ignatius writes much as this appears to humans, Aristotle of pru- of. Because he is not then engaged in that deep dence36, Marcus Aurelius of the governing spirit, moral enquiry he will not then experience the Augustine of the restlessness of the heart, Aquinas inner conflict that Ignatius describes as the strug- of right reason and the discovery of what is natu- gle between the good and evil spirit. Someone rally just37, Ignatius of the natural law of reason, who never engages in that deep moral enquiry will Pascal of the heart’s reasons, Kant of the moral never experience that interior tension. And law within, Wittgenstein of the ethical tendency because he has not experienced that tension he towards absolute goodness and value, Michel will not know what is being talked about and will Villey of dialectic as discovery, Bernard Lonergan be inclined to deny its existence. of the notion of value and of self-transcendence38, Ignatius suggests that the person who subjects William Desmond of ethical selving and of “an his whole moral being to question will experience anticipation of good inscribed in our being”39 and ‘the natural law of reason’. I have suggested that I of the good as the asymptote of moral enquiry40 this ‘natural law of reason’ is what Kant refers to we are writing, in very different rhetorics, of the as ‘the moral law within’47. This ‘natural law of same thing. We are not saying the same thing but, reason’ or ‘moral law within’ is not a known set of inadequately41, we are writing of the same thing.42 explicit statutes — it is not, for example, the com- What we are writing about is not, in the first mandments of the Decalogue, it is not a descrip- place, ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’.What we are writing tion of what is thought to be good “mediated by about, in the first place, is the original ethical or the community and especially by parents and moral experience; about the experience of being teachers”,48 it is not a code. It is rather a demand to ethical or moral subjects.43 We are moral subjects go beyond our present moral selves; ‘ethical selv- before we make that experience the object of ing’ is an answer to this demand. enquiry, before we use the word ‘goodness’ as a It were absurd, even comic, to suggest that the way of talking about that experience, and so it is guest faced with the menu acutely experiences important to distinguish between the immanent ‘the moral law within’. That someone whose structure of moral experience and any account of example of moral action is the relatively trivial that immanent structure. An account or description would write of ‘the moral law within’ is implausi-

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 259 ble. It is implausible to claim that, when Kant in any other way.” What Kant seems to be sug- wrote of it, he thought of it as dominant in every- gesting here is what Ignatius suggests in his exer- day choices where moral consciousness is, quite cises, namely, that there is a deep moral selving — properly, in large measure routine. But it is not instead of the more common term ‘self’ I am using implausible to claim that when he writes of ‘the William Desmond’s term because it does not sug- moral law within’ Kant refers to an experience that gest, as the phrase ‘deep moral self’ would sug- he has himself undergone and only one who has gest, that there are several selves — to which undergone the same experience can even begin to appeal can be made and that this appeal is not to appreciate what he means. ‘reason’ but to the ‘heart’.51 There is a more significant implausibility. It is Ignatius, in the rules, writes of what will come true that many of our everyday choices are rela- about in the moral agent who has seriously tively insignificant and imbued with routine — engaged in the spiritual exercises and is now whether to choose venison or pheasant is not usu- putting himself to question. The exercises are a set ally of great moment — but it is also true that of images the purpose of which is to bring the par- important choices can be made trivially. The ticipant to a fuller realization or actualization of moral agent faced with an important issue — even his moral being. Neither Ignatius nor Kant doubts with one that he himself considers to be of great that such moral conversion is possible. For both it importance — may yet deal with it superficially.49 is to the morally convertible person that appeal is Kant is not, I suggest, concentrating on the intrin- to be made. The ‘anticipation of the good sic importance of an issue so much as on the way inscribed in our being’ is, then, a potency and an in which the issue is dealt with. The question as to act. Everyone can be brought to such an anticipa- the goodness or evil of one’s way of life may be tion but, perhaps, not everyone is. And not every- raised superficially. The moral law within is dis- one who has been brought to this level of moral covered only when the moral agent comes deeply consciousness remains there. We know from expe- to grips with his own moral agency. The tension to rience the truth of the ancient wisdom that we are which Ignatius refers in the rules is clearly felt not confirmed in grace. only when the moral agent is deeply engaged in I am suggesting here that when ascetic writers and by the moral question. In a footnote in the sec- like Ignatius and philosophers like Augustine, ond chapter of the Groundwork of the Metaphysic Aquinas, Spinoza. Kant, Bergson, Wittgenstein, of Morals50, Kant, in answer to a question from a Lonergan, Villey, Desmond and others write of Professor Sulzer “in which he asks me what is it morality they are writing of this level of moral that makes moral instruction so ineffective, howev- consciousness. Bergson, for example, distinguish- er convincing it may be in the eyes of reason”, es between ‘joy’ and ‘pleasure’ and takes these to writes that “the most ordinary observation shows be criteriological experiences; others write of that when a righteous act is represented as being ‘quiet’ and ‘unquiet’ consciences; Ignatius writes done with a steadfast mind in complete disregard ‘sadness’, ‘disquiet’, ‘repose’, ‘joyfulness’. But of any advantage in this or in another world, and Bergson’s ‘joy’ and ‘pleasure’ emerge and are cri- even under the greatest temptations of affliction or teria only in the depths of moral experience.52 allurement, it leaves far behind it any similar action The deep moral experience to which the affected even in the slightest degree by an alien philosophers and ascetic writers refer is precisely impulsion and casts it into the shade: it uplifts the that: a moral experience of a certain kind. It is not soul and rouses a wish that we too could act in this a philosophical experience — if there be such a way. Even children of moderate age feel this thing — but, more important, it is not an experi- impression, and duties should never be presented ence to which philosophers have any kind of priv-

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 260 ileged access. The academic philosopher is no accounts or theories of moral experience. They more likely to be morally converted than is anyone may write about the same experience but differ in else. He is not, I hope, any less likely than anoth- their accounts of it. Kant’s account is not William er to reach this depth of moral consciousness but Desmond’s account, is not Levinas’s account, is he has, as a philosopher, a problem peculiar to his not Aquinas’s account, is not Lonergan’s or profession. He may want to engage in moral phi- Bergson’s account and so on. But philosophers losophy and, if he has no experience of the moral may differ also in as much as they write, without depth to which Ignatius and Kant and others refer, clearly knowing this, about different experiences. then he has no experience of what they are writing Bergson distinguishes two sources of morality53; about. He will try to write of moral experience — these correspond to what I have called two levels for moral philosophy is the attempt to give a philo- of moral experience and moral theories will differ sophical account of moral experience — but his from one another also in as much as they are, experience is truncated and superficial. Quite lit- unclearly perhaps but in fact, about these different erally, he does not know what Ignatius or Kant or levels.54 Bergson or Desmond is talking about. And since Crucial to Ignatius’s rules is tension. The per- he does not know what they are talking about he son is present to himself as desire but the desire is cannot but fail to understand them. He will, for neither simple nor quiet. At this level the everyday example, make literal sense of Bergson’s distinc- contrasts between the convenient and inconve- tion between ‘joy’ and ‘pleasure’ but he cannot but nient, the practical and impractical, the ordinary fail to understand how these experiences can act as tensions between the apparent merits of this or criteria. that proposal, transform into a deep and felt ten- The purpose of Ignatius’s spiritual exercises is sion between good and evil. How that tension will to lead the participant to this experience. In be dealt with is shown in the subsequent history of William Desmond’s words their purpose is to bring the person. Ethics and the Between is, so to speak, about an ethical selving. Their purpose is not a structural history of the tension inherent in ethi- philosophical but moral. The goal is decision not cal development. theory. The goal of the of Ignatius’s world is not the world of most mod- moral action is theory not decision. But enquiry erns. His angels are largely forgotten.55 Yet his into the nature of moral action begins with the angels introduce into the rules something that can- experience of moral action — for without that not be dismissed, for they remind us of the dialogi- experience there is nothing to enquire about. The cal character of moral experience. The moral agent moral depth to which Ignatius hopes to lead the is not alone. If angels or God are removed from the participant is open to everyone. It is not the pre- account, are we to say that the experience itself is serve of philosophers. There is, I think, no reason solitary? William Desmond writes that “Willing is a to suppose that those who make their living decisive transformation of desire: not just lived by through philosophy reach that depth any more the original energy of being, but living it, as both often than do others. I opened with a question: what one is, and what impels one to be beyond one- what is Ethics and the Between about? This deep self.”56 What, then, impels one to be beyond one- moral experience and moral conversion which is self? There is an unavoidable creativity in as much the practical goal of the Ignatian exercises is what as each present state is oriented to an unknown it is about. More generally, this is what the Platonic future. But this moral experience includes a sense of tradition is about. being called; goodness, the Good, is not a known We end up, then, with two very different ways ideal to which one would conform but an unknown in which philosophers can differ in their various other [Other]57 that summons to a freedom beyond

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 261 self-absorption.58 There is a sense of being led or entation, a tendency to absolute value. I can, yet being confronted. In this experience, when I ask not infallibly62, distinguish good from evil, if in what kind of person I will be, others are present. By the depth of moral experience I choose self-tran- his simple presence the child asks the parent: how scendence over self-absorption — in William will you be with me? And what is asked by the child Desmond’s formulation, choose freedom over is asked by each one of each one. More accurately, self-law. But I choose self-transcendence over in the simple presence of one to another, that terri- self-absorption only because I desire to be good. ble question is always a possibility. This is, I think, Thus, that fundamental choice is the realization the sense of the parable of the Good Samaritan.59 of desire. And why would I or anyone desire to be The question is, of course, for the most part, and for good? So formulated, the question misleads. It many ordinary situations, answered, and we go qui- supposes a neutral person faced with two possi- etly about our daily commerce with one another. bilities, to be or not to be good. But we are not But situations change and the dormant question neutral. We are the consciously and responsibly may again erupt. In Ethics and the Between the desiring beings. The good is the name of the eruption of the moral question is not only from unknown fulfilment of desire. This is the tenden- within; not only a desire but a summons.60 cy in the human mind of which Wittgenstein Earlier I formulated three interwoven ques- spoke.63 Restlessness and rest. There is no reason, tions.61 In St Ignatius’s Exercises these questions nothing that would ordinarily be called a reason, and their suggested answers are unstated; yet they to choose one over the other,64 to choose self- are the guiding presuppositions of the work. The transcendence over self-absorption, to choose good is an unknown to be discovered and accom- freedom over self-law; only this: that in rest, in plished not a formulated rule to be followed; it self-transcendence and in freedom is the heart’s functions in moral experience as the true in intel- desire fulfilled. This is the heart’s reason of lectual enquiry. It reveals the moral self as an ori- which ‘reason’ is ignorant.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this essay was read at the study day to celebrate William Desmond’s Ethics and the Between (SUNY, 2001) held at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte in Leuven, Belgium on Friday, the 23rd of November 2001. 2. Why did Kant put these together? Too often we read ‘geometrically’ and so we tend to overlook the images and metaphors embedded in the text. 3. In After Principles, Notre Dame U.P., 1990, I have given an account of ethical action in which ethical principles are understood not as propositions but as oriented operations; we cannot avoid asking what we are to do, what we are to become, how we are to be and this inevitability, for the ethical question is humanly inevitable, is the fundamental ethi- cal principle. The ethical question is oriented towards its as yet unknown answer the general structure of which is: ‘X is to be done’. 4. In Essays on a Philosophical Interpretation of Justice: The Virtue of Justice, Edward Mellen Press, 1999, I have developed the idea of the just as intrinsic to contract and, in the ninth chapter, have discussed the properly concrete, per- sonal and immediate question: Why be just? 5. Augustine discovers in himself the restlessness of the heart, generalizes his personal discovery to include us all — not alone his heart but ours — and puts forward the hypothesis that the human heart will find rest in God. His reader’s first question should not be whether or not his hypothesis is correct but whether or not the experience occurs.

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 262 6. Augustine’s hypothesis is his suggested answer to a question within the Platonic tradition. William Desmond’s book and this essay are within that tradition. I do not mean that Augustine, William Desmond or I propose Plato’s answers but that disagreement, where it exists, is within the tradition that has its origins in Plato and Parmenides. It is worth remark- ing that contemporary pragmatists, rather than propose different answers from Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Augustine’s or Desmond’s, suggest that the questions that arise within the Platonic tradition should not be asked. In Collingwoodian terms, they suggest that the questions arise upon presuppositions that should not have been made. Here is a remarkably lucid account of this from Richard Rorty: “…So pragmatists see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we should ask those questions anymore. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or of man which says that ‘there is no such thing’ as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a ‘relativistic’ or ‘subjectivist’ theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject.” “The Fate of Philosophy”, The New Republic, October 18, 1982, 27 7. We experience the finality of desire, that is, we experience ourselves as straining towards an unknown — perhaps even chimeric — fulfilment. The notion of fulfilment is intrinsic to desire whether or not such fulfilment is actually pos- sible. See on “finality” B.J.F.Lonergan, Insight, Longmans, 1957 and on the chimeric character of human desire, ’s “Lecture on Ethics”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXIV, January 1965, 3-12. 8. Ethics and the Between, (henceforth EB ), 2 9. The answer is, of course, itself a proposition and so, for it to be true, what it states of propositions must be true of itself. 10. A proposition “S is P” is true iff S is P. 11. A proposition “S is P” is not true iff not(S is P). 12. My translation. The Institutes of Justinian, Lib. Primus, Titulus I De Justitia et Jure: Justitia est constans et per- petua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuens, Greenwood, 1970; see also Barden, G: Essays on a Philosophical Interpretation of Justice: The Virtue of Justice, Mellen, 1999. 13. If the good is understood simply as the object of desire, then it makes no sense to talk of some desires being for the good and some for a specious or merely apparent good. Patently our desires are sometimes for what is accepted — even by ourselves — as good and sometimes for what is accepted — again even by ourselves — as a specious good. Few are tempted to lie gratuitously but many are tempted to lie when this seems convenient. Many who are tempted to lie feel also the pull of the desire to tell the truth. These desires are mutually antagonistic and existentially incoherent and so it becomes difficult to continue to understand the good simply as the object of desire. 14. Desires occur within us; they are, in the original sense, passions, that is, what we undergo. At the close of Herman Lenz’ novel Der Wanderer [Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1986] there is this passage: “Wer flößte dies ein? Marc Aurel würde sagen: sein Leitvermögen….Vielleicht war dieses “Leitvermögen” dasselbe, was ein andere viel später “das moralische Gesetz” gennant hatte…….Aber so etwas wie “das moralische Gesetz” war doch bei jedem etwas anderes. Und Eugen meinte, dieses “Leitvermögen” sei das Gefühl dessen, was er sich zutrauen konnte. Mehr zu wollen, als du kannst, das wäre dumm gewesen.” 15. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Exercices Spirituels, (trans. François Courel, s.j.), Descleé de Brouwer, Paris, 1963. I have translated the passages quoted from this edition. Ignatius’s Exercises were written in Spanish in the early middle years of the sixteenth century. He began to write them at Manresa in 1523, made revisons during the next ten years and very minor alterations until the mid forties of that century. 16. In Fr Codina’s edition of 1928 (Marietti, Turin) the paragraphs are numbered and this numbering is taken up in most later editions. The first group of rules run from §313 to §327; the second group from §328 to §336. 17. Ignatius of Loyola, St., op.cit., Introduction, 7 18. To claim that the question of God’s existence is philosophical is to claim that the question is properly addressed and can be answered within philosophy. The theoretical agnostic answer, namely, that the question cannot be answered, is, to speak more exactly, the answer to a related but different question: can it be known whether or not God exists? The agnostic answer eliminates the question: Does God exist? One must be careful to distinguish here between the theoreti- cal agnostic who asserts that whether or not God exists cannot be known and what may be called the provisional agnos- tic who states simply that he does not yet know the answer. The claim that the truth or falsity of Goldbach’s conjecture

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 263 cannot be known is quite different from the claim that no one yet knows whether it is true or false. The assertion, ‘the Word became flesh’, is not an assertion within philosophy and its associated question, ‘Did the Word become flesh?’, is not a philosophical question. Neither is it a question within scientific theology unless it is taken to mean: Is that the Word became flesh a Christian belief? That ‘the Word became flesh’ is asserted — believed — by Christians; the business of Christian theology is not to discover whether or not this is true but to throw some light on this assertion and on the fact to which it refers. The question ‘Did the Word become flesh?’ is a religious question; the questioner here is asking whether or not he is prepared to believe the assertion that the Word became flesh. 19. The last two of these answers are not versions of one another. See fn.18. 20. See my After Principles, Notre Dame U.P., 1990, chapter 7. ‘Absurd’ here does not mean ‘foolish’ but is used as Sartre uses it. When Wittgenstein, in the lecture referred to, speaks of the absolute good as a chimera he does not mean that it is merely silly to attend to it; the absolute good is, as it were, a deep and unavoidable absurdity. At least in Wittgenstein’s analysis, the experiences that he would describe as wondering at the existence of the world or of feeling absolutely safe are not experienced as absurd. He who feels absolutely safe does not at the same time feel that it is absurd to feel this way. The chimerical character of these experiences is a later theoretical conclusion. Equally, neither in Wittgenstein’s analysis nor in mine is the experience, which can be described as wondering at the existence of the world, an experience of God although for Wittgenstein this experience is “exactly what people were referring to when they said that God had created the world.” op.cit. 10. 21. Ignatius of Loyola, St., op.cit. 7. 22. The word ‘spiritual’ is nowadays often used as a synonym for ‘religious’ but it has a wider use that should be borne in mind here. Ignatius’s exercises are ‘religious’ in as much as they are assumed to be undertaken by a religious person and they are given a religious, indeed a Christian, interpretation. But the wider use is crucial. The serious examination of one’s life at a critical juncture with a view to reordering it is a ‘spiritual exercise’ and, indeed, the ‘spiritual exercise’ that Ignatius had in mind. See Ignatius, op.cit. §1. 23. Peter and Paul may disagree that Peter was tempted to steal by the Devil while agreeing the Peter was indeed tempt- ed to steal. That the temptation was ‘by the Devil’ is an interpretation of an experience; what the person experiences is being tempted. 24. Wittgenstein’s objection to Schlick’s ‘rational’ understanding of decision relevant is here. Schlick was thinking of particular decisions whereas Wittgenstein knew that the person is the principle of each decision and what the person eth- ically is originates in his answer, more or less explicit, as to what kind of person he is to be. See F. Waismann, “Notes on Talks with Wittgenstein”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXV, London, January 1965, 13: “At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite essential. Here nothing more can be established, I can only appear as a person speaking for myself.” Part of the passage to which this refers reads: “Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something of the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.” [op. cit. 12; my emphasis]. See also Cyril Barrett’s forthcoming study of Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion. 25. The term ‘structural fact’ here refers to what Wittgenstein refers to when he writes of the ethical tendency in the human mind. Pragmatically, of course, the torturer may well be — indeed, one would expect him to be — immune to any effort to bring about a change of heart. This pragmatic immunity is what Hannah Arendt has called the banality of evil. As pragmatically immersed in his evil he is immune but as a man he is not. 26. See my “The Structure of Terrorism”, mss., 2001. 27. Whether or not Wittgenstein accepts this presupposition is, perhaps, open to further question. Arnold Burms in his contribution to the study day, “The Community of Agapeic Service”, in his discussion of Wittgenstein’s lecture, concen- trates on Wittgenstein’s insistence that ethics is not a science and so lacks a method of judging actions independently of the actor’s form of life. What Waismann reports Wittgenstein to have said in response to Schlick [17th December 1930 ] is, on the face of it, pure Occam but I am not completely convinced that it is in fact. Perhaps his concentration is less on God’s commands than on the absence of reasons. See above p. 259. His remarks on the ethical tendency in the human spir- it refer to its intrinsic goal which is to discover value that in some sense is independent of the particular person’s immedi- ate desire. The ethical tendency is towards absolute value, absolute goodness. The goal need not be imagined as obedience

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 264 to God’s commands. Similarly, Kant’s advertence to “the starry heavens above and the moral law within” need not be imagined as the instantaneous disclosure of a set of rules. The discovery of the moral law within is the discovery of one- self as ineluctably a moral being. The conscious discovery of this tendency in oneself is the experiential discovery of a desire for self-transcendence. The good, then, is achieved in the self-transcending act. See EB, 8, 483-515. 28. When one puts one’s way of life to the question and, perhaps, decides to change, one does not experience this shift as simply a shift in opinion or immediate desire. But neither is a momentous shift experienced as a change of mind sim- ply because some new fact or some error has been adverted to — for example, the discovery that the train one had thought was leaving at 18h30 was in fact scheduled to leave at 18h00 would lead to a change of mind about what time to be at the station. But great moral change is not quite like that; it doesn’t have reasons quite like that. This, I think, is Wittgenstein’s point and one can concentrate in reading the lecture, and without contradiction, on the illusory character of ethics and the consequent difficulty inherent in the attempt to convince others, as Arnold Burms does or on the absolute character of the ethical, as I do. But each of us concentrates on the absence of ‘factual’ reasons to live up to the ethical tendency toward absolute good and absolute value. The strain between Arnold Burms’s account and mine is in the orig- inal. 29. In his contribution at the study day, “The Meaning of the Moral Imperative”, Ignace Verhack distinguished ‘moral’ from ‘ethical’. I understood him to mean that the moral was a sub-domain of the ethical. I do not think that William Desmond makes this distinction. I do not make it. For me the ethical or moral domain is the domain of deliberation and choice; it is the domain in which inevitably we are because we cannot but ask what we are to do. Because we cannot but ask this, our being is ethical. Of course, the particular questions that any particular person does in fact ask may be more or less restricted. In his Exercises, St. Ignatius tries to lead the participant to the quite unrestricted question as to what he is to be, the answer to which will more or less fully and more or less constantly permeate his life in all its concreteness. 30. Courel, loc.cit. footnote 12. 31. See EB, 95 “Life, we learn, is what we missed while it was passing, as we willed to master it with our manuals.” This page and the next discuss casuistry and the Jesuits and so is particularly relevant to the present discussion. 32. On the relationship between randomness, chance, fortune and providence see St , Summa Theologiæ, I: 19,8; 22,2; 23,1,3 & 6; 103,7. IaIIæ: 10,4. IIaIIæ: 83,2; 171,6. In general, events that from one perspective are correctly understood as random or chance events are, from another perspective, correctly understood as providential. The idea of providence is a way of looking at events; it is not the explanation of some events rather than of others. 33. The emergence into consciousness of this inner tension is akin to the emergence of insight. One can prepare for it but cannot command it. Hence, traditionally, understanding is a passion and an inspiration. 34. Ignatius, op.cit. First rule of the first set of rules. 35. The list of disputants is long and getting longer. I mention only the great French legal philosopher of the 20th cen- tury, Michel Villey whose distinctions between Torah and Dikaion, between lex and jus and between classical and mod- ern natural law theory in his Critique de la pensée juridique moderne, Dalloz, Paris, 1976 and other writings are both valuable and little enough known beyond the confines of legal philosophy. 36. See also Aubenque, Pierre, La Prudence chez Aristote, Paris, 1963. 37. See also Caldera, Rafael-Thomas, Le jugement par inclination chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Paris, 1980. 38. Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology, London, 1972, ch. 2. 39. EB, 167. See also footnote 9 above. 40. See my After Principles, Notre Dame, 1990; Essays on a Philosophical Interpretation of Justice, Mellen, 1999 41. Rorty, op.cit., is more severe. Worse than inadequately: “They [the philosophers in the Platonic tradition] might have found something interesting to say about the essence of Truth [or, Goodness]. But in fact they haven’t.” 42. The object of discourse is not entirely defined by what is said of it within the discourse. Compare Lonergan, Bernard, Insight, London 1957, 686 “…..the critical thinker does not allow developments in the notion of God to gener- ate any doubt that it is one and the same being to which all men refer whether they are more or less successful in con- ceiving him, whether correctly they affirm his existence, or mistakenly they deny it.” 43. In his “Notas sobre la respuesta ética de la resistencia”, biTARTE 24, 8th year, Donostia, September 2000, 5-14 the contemporary Spanish Basque philosopher Antonio Casado da Rocha writes that “the being of humans is moral”: “Cuando Levi escribe sobre el saboteador de Birkenau, cuando Melville escribe sobre Bartleby, cuando Platón escribe

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 265 sobre Sócrates, todos afirman que la supervivencia no es un valor absoluto. Y con ello no contradicen la Ética de Spinoza cuando ésta afirma que cada cosa se esfuerza por perseverar en su ser, y que esfuerzo es la esencia actual de la cosa: el ser humano es moral — ser moral es algo esencialmente humano — y, por lo tanto, par ‘perseverar en su ser’ no es la mera supervivencia lo que ha de ser eligido, sino la preservación de esa moralidad en cuyo núcleo se encuentra la liber- tad o dignidad humana: eso que he venido llamando la resistencia ética.” [13] See also my “The Location of Ethical Speech: a response to M. Lustigman’s ‘The Fifth Business: the Business of Surviving in Extremity’” in The Human Context, London, Vol.VII, No.3, Autumn 1975, 441-443. Lustigman’s essay and his rejoinder to my response appear in the same issue. We can know and can say that ‘human being is moral’ because, and only because, we experience ourselves as moral. The description is an empirical one. 44. On the distinction between the immediate knowledge of consciousness and the theoretical knowledge of con- sciousness see St. Thomas’s seminal article in the Summa Theologiae, I, 87, 1. Also Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology, pp.18-19; and “Cognitional Structure” in Collection, ed. F.E. Crowe, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1967, 221-239 45. It is possible to begin a philosophical analysis of ethical action with very ordinary decisions but to restrict oneself to these is mistaken. And yet the interplay of enormously many for the most part ordinary decisions and transactions makes up the market and is the object of economics. But every decision and transaction is a moral or ethical action; some are routine, some are not. Economics, then, is the study of the interplay of ethical actions yet not of the tendency towards absolute value. 46. ‘Deep’ and ‘superficial’ are metaphors. Rather than simply overlook that fact or suppose that such metaphors ought to be avoided “Let us ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep?” [Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations I, 47e, 111, trans. E.Anscombe, Blackwell, 1963]. Notice that Wittgenstein has deep or profound respect for the ethical tendency. Let us equally ask ourselves: why do we feel that St. Ignatius’s exercises are to lead us to deep ethical experience? 47. “Der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir.” 48. Patrick Riordan sj in a review of Robert Spaemann Happiness and Benevolence, T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 2000 in Milltown Studies, No.47, Summer 2001, 163. The mediated learning of what is thought to be good is of immense impor- tance and we learn not only what is thought to be good but goodness, generosity and gratitude [EB, dedication on unnum- bered p.v] from others. But beneath this is the experience of which Ignatius writes and to which he hopes to lead the par- ticipant and this is the deep experience of moral being in which the person is present to himself as nakedly oriented to an unknown as yet unnamed absolute good. 49. Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil is a study of superficial response to enormous moral questions but it were a great error to imagine that the example of the Nazi’s is unique or even uncommon. 50. Kant, Immanuel: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Ch. 2 trans. H.J.Paton, Harper Torchbooks, N.Y., 1964, 78; 411 of the second German edition. 51. What is the relationship between everyday routine or habit and the deep moral experience is clearly a question of great importance. It is what in their practice the Spiritual Exercises are about. But it is not explored here. 52. Bergson, Henri: Oeuvres, PUF, 1959, 832-833, 1024, 1245; Mélanges, PUF, 1972, 871 [after notes by Jules Grivet “Cours du Collège de France” 1910-1911]: “L’esprit tire de lui-même plus qu’il n’a, dans une joie qui est la manifesta- tion des intentions fondamentales de la vie.” In his “Life and Consciousness” [The Huxley Memorial Lecture, originally given in English in Birmingham, in 1911 at 932 of Mélanges] he writes of the joy of creation and of “the creation of self by self”. In the French version [Oeuvres, 833] he writes of this joy as “a divine joy”. 53. Bergson, H: Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion [1932] Oeuvres, 979-1247. 54. It seems to me that Richard Rorty, in the article already referred to, has in mind an everyday level of moral expe- rience in which the tensions described in EB are hardly felt. There is, at this level, nothing in the torturer to appeal except that this level of moral experience is intrinsically, although not easily, open to the deeper level. The moral agent at the everyday level cannot be argued into the deeper level but, in principle if not ineluctably, he can be brought from one level to the other by the use of symbols such as the good Samaritan. The other person is not simply a fact but a demand or request; we are present to each other not as fact but as mutual demands or requests. That way of putting the matter is, obviously, due to Levinas. Kant writes of the same experience as the requirement not to treat the other person as means.

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 266 In EB this becomes the Agapeic Universal [494-501] and see particularly footnote 5 on 496. 55. Yet not entirely. William Desmond mentions angels twice [EB, 8 and 456]: “The life of the saint is useless and indeed beyond sovereignty, yet a healthy commonsense society knows that its own life is merely banal if its domesticity and everydayness is not punctured by unpredictable visitors from beyond, visitors to be treated with the utmost rever- ence, lest it be a god or an angel that visits.” [456] 56. EB, 245 57. If the deep moral experience is a longing for ultimate meaning, absolute value and absolute goodness, then, since these are not ourselves but the unknown goal of experienced desire, an Other — even if this Other is no more than a fig- ment — within the experience makes the experience a dialogue. The moral experience is not a monologue. The experi- ence is of I-Thou, even if, in later theory, the Thou is repudiated. Experientially there is an absolute Thou. This is the deeper import — a meaning different from and beyond Occam — of the idea that the good is what God ordains. If this Thou is a figment, then the tendency in the human spirit is absurd. 58. EB, 7 — 8: “We must formulate a conception of freedom in communication with the other, before and beyond autonomy. There is a freedom beyond autonomy: a release of self towards the other that is not determined by self-law.” Experientially, the other is present primarily as confrontation and summons however that summons is answered. This is central to Sartre as much as to Levinas even if they deal with the experience very differently; Kant speaks of the imper- ative not to treat the other as a means; Buber, in Ich und Du [1923], makes the same claim. 59. In my Essays on a Philosophical Interpretation of Justice, Mellen, 1999, 77-81 I have suggested that the other per- son, the man who fell among thieves, is, in the parable, clearly shown as call or summons. Our immediate relationship with another is ethical as Levinas has constantly reminded us. It is worth noting that the epigraph to EB is the passage from St. Luke’s Gospel that introduces the parable. 60. See EB, final paragraph, 514. 61. See above 256: “First, among my many conflicting desires, how am I to discern which are good and which only speciously so? Second, what part does the desire to be good play in the discovery of what is good? Third, why would I desire to be good?” 62. This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. A fundamental choice to be a self-transcending person is so far empty. It takes its content from the everyday world of daily living. It is realized, more or less well, more or less endur- ingly, in concrete situations and in particular choices and since what is chosen is chosen in concrete situations, correct understanding of the situation is also required and this is not guaranteed. Thus, the just person needs to know what in the circumstances justice demands. 63. Op.cit., 13 64. It is possible to show someone that lying goes against the grain of conversation; that were lying to become ram- pant conversation would be undermined; that lying involves the liar in a web of fabrication where sustained coherence is almost impossible; that lies will often be discovered to the liar’s detriment; that being known as a liar is a disadvantage and so on. Because it sometimes is to a person’s self-absorbed advantage to lie, it is not possible truly to show that it is not. It is, therefore, not possible to give to the self-absorbed person a convincing reason why he should not now and when- ever convenient lie. For he may think of lying as no more than a social risk that, in certain circumstances, he is prepared to take. For a longer analysis of this point see my Essays on a Philosophical Interpretation of Justice, chapter 9, “Why be just?”

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 267 Response by William Desmond

Garrett Barden’s essay is a rich and complex this dialogue is not one-way, since it may well turn reflection on discernment, ethically with regard to out that decent philosophical reflection brings to the discrimination of desires, and in communica- mind what has been forgotten or overlooked. In tion with St. Ignatius of Loyola’s discernment of that respect, good philosophical reflection may spirits. The essay embodies the discernment about contribute to the refreshment of the sources of which it speaks. Garrett Barden supervised my being ethical, and mediate practices of life that are MA thesis on imagination and Collingwood at themselves more genuinely ethical. For instance, University College Cork in the early 1970s, and as Barden makes one or two references to Marcus teacher and friend he continues to embody for me Aurelius and the governing power. One is here something of what philosophical integrity means: well reminded of the fact that philosophy in pre- mindful openness to what experience and life offer modern times was intimately connected with the us, and the responsive exploratory thought that it practices of a life, with a way of living, rather than calls forth, thought that knows it never entirely with any theory merely abstract. I would say that exhausts what it thinks about. Ethics and the Between is written in a similar spir- His reflections here are in the nature of a dia- it, even though the surface of systematic organiza- logue, not only with what I have written, but with tion in the book might be potentially misleading a range of other philosophers, and foremost the on that score. I think Garrett Barden has under- writings of someone from whom one might expect stood this very well, and in his own reflections he to learn something about being good, Ignatius of enacts something of a similar practice of ethical Loyola. It would be a study in itself as to why reflection. philosophers today reflect little on what the saint The emphasis on discernment/discrimination is might communicate, not only for the ethical, but very important, and this is a nuanced exploration in also for what might transcend autonomous secular its own right. In our discussion during the study ethics. This is a not unimportant topic in Ethics day itself, we spoke of the fact that the spiritual and the Between, namely the boundary between exercises of Ignatius were occasioned by his great the ethical and the religious, and the desire to call retreat in 1523, itself undertaken in a cave at into question certain claims of autonomy made for Manresa. Ignatius’s cave put me in mind of Plato’s ethics. I mean that ethics as a philosophical reflec- cave. Garrett Barden remarks on my continuity tion is itself already a dialogue with an already with the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, and I think given happening of ‘being ethical’, a happening this is correct, as Cyril O’Regan amplifies in his that is immensely rich and ambiguous. study. In response to that study I will say some- Garrett Barden’s essay is here a dialogue in a thing more about this Platonic-Augustinian her- second sense. It reminds us that if our participa- itage. Playing the role of speleologist, it is impor- tion in this happening of being ethical is either tant to see that there are different kinds of caves. feeble or superficial or amnesiac or neglectful, we The cave of Plato is one of the great similes, func- will lack the full resources to pursue ethical reflec- tioning for the philosophical tradition as what Vico tion in a properly robust manner. And of course, called an imaginative universal. It is relevant that

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 268 its power, even for philosophers, draws from and in its conversion. We are dealing with a resources that are not themselves simply philo- dynamic happening: in itself and beyond itself, sophical. Plato, supposedly the great philosophical outside itself and intimate to itself, seeking above enemy of the image bequeathed to us philosophers itself and capable of falling below itself. There is some of the most richly suggestive images. But as nothing univocal about this, showing us also Ignatius of Loyola suggests to us, there are also something in excess of determinate measure (such religious caves, a darkness into which the soul can as I discuss below in my essay). One also thinks retreat, but in that retreat come before its own of the Platonic periagoge. Philosophy is a turning demons and angels. One might wonder if there are, around of the soul, not just a ‘theory’: the revolu- so to say, caves that are themselves underground to tion of the soul in the right direction, and indeed the first underground. Plato thinks we need to be the right facing of the soul in the right direction. released from the first underground, but what if We are not going elsewhere, but there is an there are disciplines of discernment that we can intensive mindfulness of what we are that recurs only learn by retreat into this second underground more and more deeply to the intimate sources of — for instance, the cave of religious purgatory, ethical selving. This recurrence to the intimacy of which, of course, may be a cave of horror more ethical sources is what I signal by means of the dark than philosophical day can take in. I mean ethical potencies. But we also find that we are philosophical day as thinking that it is the rational never entirely alone. Plato spoke of thinking as the measure of all reality. I doubt very much that Plato dialogue of the soul with itself, but the soul’s con- was guilty of that kind of philosophical callow- versation discovers that the idea of absolute soli- ness. Everything about the discernment we require tude is just what solitude dissolves. I take this as seems to call out for our need for night vision. part of the point of a retreat. Thus a religious Plato was himself well aware of the paradoxical retreat, again with a bow to Ignatius of Loyola, is conjunction of insight and being blinded in the into silence and perhaps darkness and solitude, but philosophical quest itself. The poet Yeats some- everything of this serves the opening or re-open- where has this phrase, describing something of his ing of ways of communication. The retreat asks own poetic inspiration: “Blackout: heaven burning for the finesse of discernment in which our poros- into the head”. What is blackout? What is it for ity to what is more than ourselves is communicat- heaven to burn into the head? What has this to do ed. Ultimately I think this porosity is more pri- with the cave, or the cave beneath the cave? Or the mally religious rather than ethical. And in that cave that we are ourselves? I think it has something sense, if what Garrett Barden offers us also exon- to do with what Plato calls theia mania, but also erates the invocation of saints like Ignatius, the with what elsewhere I call the idiocy of the mon- silence about such figures in contemporary ethics strous: the intimacy of the monstrous, and an inti- says something about us, about our discernments, macy on the other side of our own most intimate and perhaps also forms of finesse and delicatesse intimacy with ourselves. in which we are deficient. If I understand him, Garrett Barden points to Garrett Barden’s reflection also helped me bet- the importance of a kind of moral conversion, not ter to see something about the relation of system just for life but for the adequate practice of philo- and therapy in Ethics and the Between. The book sophical reflection on the ethical. The issue of attempts a certain working through of an entire conversion recalls the Augustinian tradition with range of ethical possibilities. Against taking the its exploration of the twisting and turning of book too much in the direction of ‘system’, it human desire: in its extroversion, in its dispersion, seeks to enact a kind of therapy of desire. The in its aversion, in its introversion, in its reversion, ‘working through’ is both a process of ethical

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 269 selving, as well as a release to being in communi- that lecture when he talks about wonder before the cation with others, human and non-human. As I fact that things are, or the feeling of being have insisted, the point is not just giving a univo- absolutely safe. “Ethics and aesthetics are the cal theory. If it is more like negotiating a maze, same”. What Wittgenstein calls the ethical in his one is and one is not the maze oneself; and there lecture, I would see as the beginning of meta- is more than oneself in the maze. I see the need physics. Wittgenstein had something of the dis- for slower, meditative reading for which philo- cernment to see and acknowledge that here we sophical writing — itself porous to the poetic and meet with what is of ultimate moment. And yet, the religious — is not a set of mere rhetorical strangely, what seems of ultimate moment is, on flourishes, but an ordering of reminders of the reflection, just a ‘chimera’. Beyond the acknowl- richness of happening in which all reflective edgement of what seems of ultimate moment, thinking is embedded. The reminder is not to for- Wittgenstein seems hamstrung about what then he get the richness, and sometimes horror, of the thinks philosophy should do or can say. There is no originating matrix in which mindfulness itself univocal theory into which to fit such happenings emerges. of ultimate moment. I completely agree with that Perhaps there is something Wittgensteinian point, and everything I have written is intended as about this emphasis on reminders, though it could an exorcism of the bewitchments of univocal theo- also be seen in a more Platonic light. Garrett ry applied without finesse. Was Wittgenstein not Barden’s style of philosophizing offers a series of trying to free himself from the bewitchments of reminders that tries to remain faithful to the matrix certain univocal theories? Perhaps he was also of everyday life and the emergence of reflective bewitched by a univocal theory of what a philo- ethical thought from this. If I am more systematic sophical ‘theory’ is? As if the practice of philo- in one sense, in another sense this can be mislead- sophical thinking as a kind of therapy did not have ing, in that I pursue presentiments in the dark, a very long pedigree. ‘Plato’, as I indicated, is that sometimes guided only by faith in night vision. kind of philosophical therapist, as well as source of Once articulated, what one has seen, or thinks one different ‘theories’. Becoming free of the bewitch- has seen, looks more determinate, but this is so in ments of univocal theory does not free us from the the way that a shape looks more determinate once summons of thought — nor absolve philosophy having emerged from a fog. Once having emerged, from the need to think newly, to think anew what we tend to forget the fog, are taken up with the the standard versions of univocal theory merely form as there. We forget the very dynamic of form- eviscerate in claiming to comprehend. ing in the ‘too muchness’ out of which this or that Wittgenstein names what is extremely important, form has emerges. If discernment is at the core, but one wonders if he had the intellectual resources then there is no system of discernment, though either to do justice to it, or place it in a discursive there can be disciplines of mindfulness and con- context in which its fuller significance might be sideration that cultivate discernment. There is no illuminated. Garrett Barden is trying to do some- geometry of discernment. Garret Barden’s essay is thing like that, and with admirable finesse. a reminder, Wittgensteinian as well as Platonic and In Ethics and the Between I couple Wittgenstein Ignatian, of the finesse of the heart. and Plato as philosophers of the equivocity of the By coincidence, Garrett Barden and Arnold everyday. My own practice of philosophy is contin- Burms both make reference to Wittgenstein’s uous with a long tradition, but it points to a way of “Lecture on Ethics”. I will say a little more in mindfulness that finds no easy home in the current- response to Arnold Burms, but Wittgenstein clear- ly dominant schools of professionalized philoso- ly puts his finger on extremely important things in phy. Its extra-professional reference is always

Ethical Perspectives 8 (2001)4, p. 270 intended to return us to life, as I imply in the last In the presentiments of the metaphysical that line of the introduction to Ethics and the Between. Wittgenstein calls the ethical, Garrett Barden It may well be that others are there at that moment would less find a ‘chimera’ as what he suggests is of elemental release without any philosophizing. an absurdity that is not absurd. Some absurdities But to one who knows the demand of thought, are absurd and nothing more; but some are surd, engagement with the possibilities of philosophy and yet they are what make all the difference. proves unavoidable. The question remains: To what They are what they are, something elemental and point, to what end? This question is at the heart of irreducible, less to be explained through some- the Platonic periagoge. Nietzsche understood the thing else, as that relative to which other things question, even to the point of justifying lying, become illuminated. God is surd in that sense. depending on what the lie served. I cannot endorse God is God and nothing but God is God. Hence Nietzsche, but one can see that what looks like the God cannot be explained through anything other. same activity can be quite other, depending on what God is absurd in this sense of surd, and without ends of spirit it serves. There are ways of telling the whom, we can come to see, all is straw. Garrett truth which are destructive and hence not in the Barden focuses on the heart as a surd that is not spirit of truth. There are so-called ‘ordinary activi- absurd. From it our being ethical comes, as also ties’ that can be deepened by thought to the point does our ethical reflection emerge. To it, as he per- when something of their point is more lucidly suasively argues, our being ethical and our ethical understood. Thus thinking can serve the point: to reflection must come. live well. Despite the reassurances of , to live well is not so easy, nor what it is so evident.

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