Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The presence of the affectio commodi and the affectio justitiae in the
same person gives rise to a paradox—one noted earlier, but that now
will be developed a bit more. The presence of both affections makes
morality possible, but as John Boler observes, Duns Scotus “cannot
accept a theory such as Aristotle's where the moral is analyzed in terms
of self-perfection or self-realization, i.e., in terms of the rational agent's
inclination to realize the perfection of its nature.”
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That is, a morality
based exclusively on the good of the individual agent cannot be the whole
story for it is a morality limited to my own human nature. To pursue the
affectio justitiae or to experience empathy is to transcend one's human
nature and, in a paradoxical way, act against one's nature. Thus, in a
free act—though not free in any unbounded or totally arbitrary sense—
the agent can seek the good of another—as opposed to seeking one's
genetic advantage only. I raise this issue not only to engage in a discus-
sion of a critical experience on which we can begin to construct an ethic
but also to question whether such an experience of the affectio justitiae
might be a grounding of another transcendent experience—a religious
one. Can the experience of a good beyond oneself lead to an experience
of some yet-higher or perhaps ultimate good? Can such an experience
be a transcendent point of opening for an encounter with the presence
of another, or another dimension of, reality? Reality seems to be open
enough for such a reading, particularly when we recall Ehrlich's own dis-
satisfaction with a strictly materialist reading of human experience. An
expression of such a reflection on this possibility is the poem “God's
Grandeur” by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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