Saturday, February 28, 2015

I hear the bells

My favorite poet in the world, living or dead, is John Donne (1572-1631).  One of his most famous works is this:

No man is an island, entire of itself; 
every man is a piece of the continent, 
a part of the main. 
If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less, 
as well as if a promontory were, 
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: 
any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind, 
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
it tolls for thee. 

Well known phrases here -  but what's not as well known is that this is a very small section in a larger meditation (Meditation 17) in which Donne explores how trouble can serve to draw us closer to God, whether the trouble is ours directly or that of someone else we know: it can make us meditate on the brevity of life and the increasing nearness of eternity.  Here is the rest of the meditation, for your contemplation and meditation.  :)

-o-o-o-

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Relational Ethics (and theology, too)

Currently I'm teaching as an adjunct instructor at a local university campus.  It's not for the money, nor because I'm bored, but rather trying to keep in practice and add to my teaching resume', so that in retirement I can point back to classes I've taught and hopefully get some adjunct work to bring in a little extra cash when my full-time job days are behind me.

I only teach one class per academic year, which in the last couple of years had been a World Religions course.  This year its an Ethics course, so there's a good measure of philosophy built into it.  We're studying anything from Aristotle to modern day feminists, from Virtue Ethics, to Deontology (Duty Ethics) to Utilitarianism (the greatest good) to Natural Law Ethics.  As I've been working my way through these systems with the students I noticed that in one way or another all of these major systems are dependent in one way or another on reason for their basis.  Even those ethical systems which may have a religious foundation rely on reason.  Both Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant were religious scholars, believing in a Creator God, but both argued that ethics can be derived absent a particular Theology, simply by reasoning from what distinguishes humanity as a species from the rest of the "created order".

And yet, as human beings, relationality precedes both reason and faith; we learn to feel before we learn to think, before we learn to pray.  We have a warm and meaningful relationship with our parents and siblings before we can distinguish between right and wrong, and well before the age of accountability.  Should not, then, an ethical system first consider relationships prior to reason and religion?

It seems to me that there is an element missing in ethical discussions thus far and that is the emotion involved in moral decisions, which grows in importance the closer you are to the moral quandary (family member, loved one, self).  Because we are relational beings, close relationships affect us more than do distant ones.  An ethical system like Utilitarianism, which is used so much in public policy debates, is relatively distant and cold in the way it "calculates", in an economic sense, what is the greatest good that can be achieved in an ethical dilemma.  What is needed as a counterbalance is an ethical system that recognizes the emotional component to decision making.  The "rational man" argument used so much in economics and law is flawed because it assumes detachment.  But in real life we are not detached; rather, we are emotionally invested in moral choices, and no less so than when those choices involve us and those we love.  We need an "emotional man" argument in addition to a "rational man" one in order to fully account for how people choose a course of action or react to another person's choice.

What I am calling for here is a system of ethics I'll refer to as Relational Ethics.  In a subsequent post I'll point out some of the features of this system (which I may in fact be inventing, because I can't find anything like it out there in the literature.  Maybe there's a book, or at least a thesis, in this for me!)   I think there is also a system of Theology that parallels this, Relational Theology, which I'll also try to articulate in posts to come.




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