Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series IVA, Eastern and Central Europe, Volume 37 General Editor George F. McLean Truth and Morality: The Role of Truth in Public Life Romanian Philosophical Studies, VII Edited by Wilhelm Dancă The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2008 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 Truth and morality : the role of truth in public life / edited by Wilhelm Dancă. p. cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series 4a, Eastern and Central Europe ; v. 37) (Romanian philosophical studies ; 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Truth. 2. Ethics. I. Dancă, Wilhelm, 1959- II. Title. III. Series. BD171.T713 2008 2008021990 121--dc22 CIP ISBN 978-1-56518-249-3 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface v Introduction 1 Part I. Truth Chapter I: The Culture of Recognition and the Horizons of Truth 13 Anton Carpinschi Chapter II: The Unceasing Temptation of the Lie and 29 Man’s Hunger for Truth Isidor Chinez Chapter III: Truth, Value and the Proliferation of Rights 43 Yuriy Pidlisnyy Chapter IV: Truth as the Key to Integrity, a Spiritual Journey 55 Edward McLean Discussion I: Man between the Truth of Faith and the Truth of Reason 59 Part II. Truth and Morality Chapter V: Problems of the Objectivity of Values in a Pluralistic 75 and Dialogical World Zbigniew Wendland Chapter VI: On the Problem of the Temporality of Moral Truth 81 Burhanettin Tatar Chapter VII: The Human Being between the Sky and the Earth, 93 between Good and Evil: the Human Being Next to Us Petru Gherghel Chapter VIII: Between Betrayal and Heroism 103 Gabriela Blebea-Nicolae Chapter IX: Environmental Ethics and Its Relation to Truth 113 Osman Bilen Chapter X: Morals of the Communication of Truth: Dialogue 127 among Philosophy, Theology and Science Wilhelm Dancă Part III. Truth, Morality and Public Life Chapter XI: Anthropology and Political Action: 141 Ethics as Preamble to a Fair Politics Abelardo Lobato Chapter XII: The Catholic Church and the New Europe 151 Ioan Robu Chapter XIII: The Orthodox Church and the New Europe: 167 Ecumenical Experience and Perspectives Daniel Ciobotea Chapter XIV: Truth and Morality in Our Days 175 Emiliya Velikova Chapter XV: Truth and Goodness, Culture and Morality 183 George F. McLean Discussion II: Humanity between the Political Order and Moral Law 203 Epilogue: Foundations of Truth and Morality in Public Life: 215 From the Secular to the Sacred George F. McLean Index 223 PREFACE At the beginning of the 20th century, Henry Bergson affirmed that man cannot escape his crises without spiritual development. These words of the French philosopher remain valid. Indeed, the need for improvement in the quality, being, values and models of life is felt all over the world. This seems most pronounced in Europe, especially in the countries once ruled by totalitarian communist regimes. In this geo-political area, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there has been a great desire for improvement at the social and individual level, but the change has been long delayed. Among other things, this is due to the fact that while good is closely related to truth, the search for truth has not been rigorously undertaken. Public life is not suffused with a sense that life is grounded in truth. Rather there is passive acceptance of the rupture between personal truth and public morality, between the individual conscience and laws which are correct only in political terms. Moreover, moral conscience, long buried by cultural factors and deformed by historical and reductive conceptions, remains a matter almost too delicate for discussion. Hence, this work looks deeply into the religious and philosophical cultural traditions in search of a more adequate grasp of truth, its role in private and public life and its relation to social minorities and majorities, the features of a healthy sense of life in this world, the relations between law and morality and between Church and the lay state, and the role of education. It analyzes the different ways of understanding truth and the forms of morality it generates: from the individual and subjective, unrelated to public life, to a more dynamic, objective, responsible, mature and personalized manner. The work is divided into three parts. The first is focused upon truth. This recognizes the multiple horizons of truth and its search despite the temptation of the lie. It relates truth to value and rights and conceives it dynamically as a spiritual journey. In this light it reports on an intensive discussion of the relation of faith and reason. Part II extends the horizon of truth to morality, theology and science. For the richness of the present pluralistic context and its challenge to objectivity, it explores human life as situated between good and evil, heaven and earth, betrayal and heroism, even in terms of environmental ethics. Finally Part III opens the horizons of truth still further to public life. This studies the shape of the New Europe and the contribution of the Orthodox and Catholic in shaping the political order by a morality based on truth. All this is the burden of the present volume. George F. McLean INTRODUCTION The title of this paper draws the attention of the specialised audience, as well as of the wide audience, on a theme of great interest nowadays, namely the relation between truth and morality in public life. The starting point is the deficiency of morality in public life, which may be easily noticed in the post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe. This deficiency manifests itself in various forms, both at the theoretical and practical levels. Thus, from a theoretical point of view, morality (public and individual, religious and lay) is more often invoked, rather than debated and really assumed, being dominated by the theory of forms without content (ethics without truth, metaphysics without foundations, Christianity without Christ, holiness without God, politics without the common good, etc.). From a practical point of view, morality is not related to virtues or values, but to personal and group interests, rules and consensus. These interpretations tend to become objectified and seem to characterise the societies that go through longer or shorter periods of change of the ideological paradigms. The knowledgeable scepticism, the moral relativism and religious indifference are all clinical signs of a state of crisis. In order to get out of such a deadlock, man must not give up and, furthermore, he must not keep silent, as Hans Urs von Balthasar used to say1. He must try to ask himself the radical questions regarding the ultimate meaning and ground of human, personal and social life2. He must speak and move on -- not in order to keep on going ahead, but in order not to lose his place and vocation. It does not matter at all whether he is member of a majority or a minority. From the perspective of communication, the authors of the present volume answer the call of Hans Urs von Balthasar in a particular way. Indeed, the fundamental question that seems to be decisive for people’s fate in the post-communist societies of Europe nowadays is not as much economy or politics, as ethics, especially. After the communist totalitarian governments have reduced ethics to politics, there is now an attempt to recover the ethical discourse, yet in terms of rules and contracts. As such, man would no longer be governed by an external telos, but only by the rules he imposes on himself. The passage from the moral order, independent of man’s will, to the immanent practical rationality makes it impossible for us to distinguish between what we are hic et nunc and what we should be. This type of morality fuses together the act and the potency, removing the difference between them and making the emotional, cosmopolitan and uprooted self that incarnates itself in several human representative types, such as the aesthete, the therapist and the manager, 1 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Spirit and Fire. An Interview with Hans Urs von Balthasar”, in Communio 32 (2005) 573-593. 2 Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio (1998), no. 5. 2 Introduction triumph. They equally identify themselves by the instrumental relations they establish with the world around them, meaning that the other people are no longer treated as goals in themselves, but as plain instruments or means. The social form that emerges from this emotional morality is a managerial society dominated by bureaucratic individualism3. Taking into account this challenge, the following pages will put before you a plea for theoretical, and not just practical and existential reflection, on the truth about man and society. Part I. On Truth Chapter I, “The Culture of Recognition and the Horizons of Truth”, by Anton Carpinschi, offers an anthropological model that starts from the dynamics of the hypostases of the human. According to this model, the human nature, as natural essence of what is human, and the human condition of moral and spiritual fulfilment meet in the human essence synthesised by what Pope John Paul II called the person in act. Shaping the real, fallible and creative man through the dynamics of his hypostases configures a comprehensive truth about the human being, a truth in which a culture of recognition is grounded. The central idea of this chapter is that between recognition and comprehension there is a deep, organic connection for comprehensive truth, in which the culture of recognition is grounded. Chapter II, by Isidor Chinez, “The Unceasing Temptation of the Lie and Man’s Hunger for Truth”, shows that the whole human being and existence are endowed with meaning and value from the truth that man seeks, finds, recognises and cannot ignore.