Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
our contingent achievements by a standard easier to grasp and more to
our own liking” than loyalty to God or truly ultimate values would
demand.
40
Echoing the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Lovin clarifies how sen-
suality can lead to social injustice by describing social endeavors or prac-
tices that seem to absorb all one's energy and sense of purpose, and to
discourage participants from expanding their moral vision any further
than a given endeavor's internal criteria of success. “Anything serves the
purpose which gives us a well-regulated set of activities that seem to
justify themselves. We can then lose ourselves in doing what the system
requires.”
41
Examples might range from devotion to one's family, to
being a poet or research scholar, to being a medical doctor, genetic sci-
entist, corporate executive, or delegate to the WTO. Christian realists
will be on the lookout for both “signs of institutional pride and the arro-
gance of power,” and the identification of the moral life with the myopic
mastery of practices designed to serve finite and ultimately tribalistic
goals.
42
Niebuhr was often eloquent on the intransigence of the finite loyalties
that lie at the root of social injustice as well as the deceptions necessary
to keep them in place. In his view, all the “great and good men of
history,” all the philosophers and kings, will be tempted “to hide their
will-to-power behind their virtues and to obscure their injustices behind
their generosities.”
43
Growth in human knowledge and capacities, so
definitive of the age of globalization, is evident, grants Niebuhr, in the
sense that “history obviously moves toward more inclusive ends, toward
more complex human relations, toward the enhancement of human
powers and the cumulation of knowledge.” But growth is not necessar-
ily progress, since tribal animosities may simply be expressed on new
levels of violence; practices that commandeer the individual conscience
for the sake of self-perpetuating finite goals may be projected onto global
institutions. The biblical figure or religious symbol that represents the
incremental power of evil alongside that of good is the Antichrist.
44
Because of the depth and inevitability of personal and social sin,
Niebuhr was never convinced that moral persuasion could do much to
change human nature or social arrangements. Rather than calling, with
the Catholic popes, for more human reasonableness and trust, he noted
that the privileged have historically proven themselves unwilling to give
