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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Udo Schaefer, Ethics for a Global Society, bahai-library.com.
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Ethics for a Global Society
Udo Schaefer
published in Bahá'í Studies Review4:1
London: Association for Bahá'í Studies English-Speaking Europe, 1994
Abstract: The article deals with a process of apocalyptic dimensions: the
collapse of the moral order; the disintegration of value systems over the
last few decades; the lack of moral orientation. We are now living with
these consequences. These events came to pass precisely at the time when
the emergent world society is in need of a global ethic, a universal standard
of values, ideals and goals—a need reflected in the "Declaration toward
a Global Ethic" of the recent World Parliament of Religions in Chicago,
which outlined a "minimal ethic" based on common values of the great world
religions. However, a new hierarchy of values, a new ethic for global society
has come into the world through Bahá'u'lláh's legislation
in His revelation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.
I.
We are living in a time of a global upheaval. Everything that seemed
to be fixed and solid has been seized by the storm of change. As Bahá'u'lláh
foretold, the "world's equilibrium" has been "upset" and the "present-day
order," "lamentably defective," is being "rolled up."(2)
The collapse of the prevailing order; the radical change to a new order
of things, to a level of a greater complexity and more coherent organisation;
the breakthrough of the present world-society to a world-commonwealth integrating
all nations, to a "new World Order;"(3)
all this entails chaos and catastrophe. Many people feel that their very
existence is threatened. Many see in these events the "Horsemen of the
Apocalypse."
In this process of change, nothing has undoubtedly had such a far-reaching,
radical effect on society and human thought as the change in moral views,
ideas, and concepts which took place during the past few decades. There
are no longer reliable answers to such crucial questions as: What is man?
What is the purpose of his existence? What standards should man live by?
What is good and what is evil? What is permitted and what prohibited? There
is no moral orientation, nothing to hold on to. Within a few decades a
change in the way people think has taken place with almost breath-taking
speed. It can certainly be described as a cultural revolution when one
considers its far-reaching consequences. Norms and values which have been
established by religion, and have been handed on, kept alive and considered
absolutely valid for two thousand years, and were even recognized by the
rationalists of the Enlightenment in the 18th century as rational values,
were swept away within a few decades. After losing their transcendental
basis they were open to critical questioning, and were soon dissolved in
the acid bath of a one-dimensional rationalism, that attitude which does
not allow anything to have validity unless it can be established by empirical
reason. I have described this process of disintegration of the value systems
and its consequences in my book The Imperishable Dominion: The Bahá'í
Faith and the Future of Mankind.(4)
Its end result is a spiritual vacuum, which is becoming increasingly evident,
and a lack of moral orientation, which is threatening society from inside.
Mankind's most crucial problems such as the ecological crisis, the population
explosion, the economic injustice of the present system of world economics
and the resulting North-South conflict, tyranny and despotism, civil war,
and above all the outbursts of irrational violence in every part of the
world —these problems of man's survival can only be solved on a worldwide
basis or not at all. But at the very same time as nations are challenged
to develop a co-operative global system capable of acting in solidarity,
society is rapidly disintegrating and losing its structures. The bonds
which hold society together are weakening constantly, living together with
others is becoming increasingly more difficult, and the number of conflicts
is ever on the rise.
Probably nothing shows the decline of traditional morals and the sickness
of our society as clearly as the new dimension of evil with which we are
confronted: the brutalization of our world by the increase in violence.
A British writer, Gordon Rattray Taylor, described this process in the
1970s in his book How to Avoid the Future and stated: "Just as high
temperature warns us that all is not well in the body, so violence is an
indication that something is wrong in society."(5)
This phenomenon confronts us in the rapidly increasing readiness to settle
conflicts with violence. Violence may well be as old as humanity, but its
impact within highly technological societies, its saturation in the media,
and its presence in our daily lives, is new. Friedrich Hacker, in his best-seller
on violence, described its nature, and the extent to which violence has
become part of our lives.
The most horrifying dimension of modern brutalization
is not that individual and collective violence flares up more frequently...but
that it is becoming more and more common and customary. Violence has become
an everyday, natural trivial event, a banal trifle.... We are already so
insensible that it needs a significant escalation of violence or especially
dramatic acts of brutality to rouse us up out of our dull indifference,
which supposedly derives from our feeling of helplessness.(6)
A society progressively loses its cohesion and is destined to perish, if
there are no ultimate values, no absolute obligations, if there is no civic
sense (which was called "civitas" by the ancient Romans), that "spontaneous
willingness to obey the law, to respect the rights of the others, to forego
the temptations of private enrichment at the expense of the public weal."(7)
Society cannot survive if its members have lost the ability to share and
sacrifice, if everyone furthers only his own rights and pursues his own
interests, if the highest aim in life is the utopia of living in luxe,
calme et volupté, as Baudelaire defined it,(8)
if society is based on hedonism and egotism.
The cultural crisis of the West, announced and analysed by philosophers
like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Spengler, has developed into a global
crisis of human civilisation, which endangers the survival of mankind.
What is the cause of this process and where is it leading us?
II.
At some time or other in his phylogenesis, before recorded history,
man escaped from the barriers of his instincts. He was no longer exposed
to the compulsions of nature. He gained freedom and then had to gain control
over his urges by conscious action, a uniquely human endeavour; the animal
does not act, it reacts.
Man's grandeur and dignity are his freedom. However, this is also what
endangers him. In gaining freedom he lost the automatic security of animal
instincts. From then, he had to derive his direction from values. All human
societies have systems of generally accepted values at their disposal,
which provide goals, means, and orientation for the individual as well
as for society. History reveals that mankind's great value systems are
rooted in the great historic religions and their civilisations. Western
civilisation is largely a genuinely Christian one, although the contribution
of Judaism, the culture of antiquity, and later, Islam was significant.
The values and standards people followed were an integral part of their
faith, from which they also obtained their highest motivation for moral
conduct.
For 300 years, however, the foundation of these values, the Christian
Faith, has been in retreat. It is no longer the standard and the centre
of life; it is drifting to the periphery. Atheism has become a political
movement. For seventy years, in socialist countries a militant, missionary
atheism was the dominant ingredient of state doctrine. In these countries,
religion survived in the underground; several generations grew up without
any religious education. However, in liberal democracies too, religious
traditions are withering. Symptoms of the decay of Christendom are seen
in the dramatic exodus from the Church—in Germany every year some hundred
thousands of Catholics and Protestants resign from Church membership.(9)
Today most parents no longer impart a religious consciousness to their
children; religion is no longer discussed in families. Church leaders frankly
admit that Europe is no longer a Christian continent.(10)
This crisis is especially reflected in the increasing rejection of institutionalised
Christianity among the youth who have turned instead to materialism and
self-centredness. A study commissioned by the Protestant Church, Heiner
Barz, professor at the University of Heidelberg, concludes that the younger
generation rejects any doctrine and suspects all traditions received from
their parents and any institutions. In the Church they see primarily a
"power apparatus" identical with that of the Party, the State, or the tax
office. According to Barz, the Christian image of Jesus and the symbols
of Christianity are of little relevance, its teachings frequently unknown,
and the youth are either ignorant of the concept of "sin" or dismiss it
as "outdated."(11)
The crisis of Christianity and, in its wake, the crisis of morals has
been on the way for a long time, at least since the European Enlightenment,
that Copernican revolution of thought, which began in the 17th century
and moulded the West. This new attitude was based on a belief in the power
of reason, on the conviction of the absolute certainty of rational knowledge:
"Faith in the old presuppositions and authorities, for so long considered
valid beyond question, gave way to a spirit of criticism. Reason claimed
to be autonomous and set itself up as the unique court of appeal."(12)
The spirit of modernism, which made a method of doubt, has profoundly changed
the world. It was the ideal for man in his newly-attained independence
and maturity to be liberated from prejudice and preconceived ideas and
at the same time to hold a commitment to methodological discipline and
absolute objectivity. This new way of thought has laid the foundation of
our scientific-technical civilisation. In the field of law we owe to it
great victories over barbarism: the principles of equality before the law
and of the separation of powers, the triumphant advance of democracy, the
abolition of torture and the humanisation of penal law, in short, the modern
constitutional state, a state which binds the power of the ruler to the
law and protects the citizen from governmental arbitrariness.
However, the spirit of modernism is also responsible for the deep crisis
of faith and, in its wake, the crisis of morals. Doubt was cast upon the
Christian revelation, religion was declared to be superfluous, even detrimental.
Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it in his drama "Galileo Galilei": "Belief has
prevailed for a thousand years, but now doubt has taken its place.... Doubt
is cast on time-honoured truths, and what always used to be taken for granted
is now questioned."(13) It is one of the
central dogmas of the philosophy of the Enlightenment that religion is
destined to wither away. Nietzsche's formula "God is dead!" has become
the slogan of the century. Secular society—a society in which religion
has been banned—and the mature autonomous man, i.e. an individual emancipated
from the traditions of the past and absolutely self-determining, have become
the goal and direction of the people.
Belief in God has been replaced by belief in reason and human progress,
by faith in the completion of history, by science and technology. Messianic
expectations have been replaced by the utopia of a man-made paradise. Man's
conviction that he is able to create a better world, the "Messianic Kingdom,"
by rational analysis and political action have superseded the transcendental
promises of salvation.(14) Thus, the world
has been made rational and technical, and, as a consequence, utilitarian.
What remains is a vast emptiness in which man is cut off from his metaphysical
origins, and left impoverished with merely the affairs of this world to
care about: discovery, invention, progress, achievement, production, and
consumption.
Now, at the end of the second millennium, the optimistic belief in the
omnipotence of reason and the Enlightenment, in science and progress, has
dwindled. Jürgen Habermas has diagnosed perplexity among intellectuals
and politicians, a lack of confidence in Western civilisation(15).
The deficiencies of an unbalanced Enlightenment are becoming increasingly
evident. The fading Christian faith has left a vacuum which has, as Nietzsche
clearly predicted, seized everything which is built on this faith: "For
example our entire European morality."(16)
Nietzsche called this phenomenon of the devaluation of the highest values
and the lack of meaning nihilism: "The aim is lacking; 'why' finds
no answer."(17) Nihilism is the conviction
"that nothing has any value, that no standards are binding, that no purpose
exists, that there is nothing worth living or dying for, that everything
is futile".(18) Russian writers like Ivan
Turgeniev and Fyodor Dostoevsky described the spreading spiritual vacuum,
and European thinkers from the nineteenth century clearly anticipated its
consequences. Nihilism has become the shaping power of our civilisation:
"The frustration, the embitterment, the hatred of history, of the illusions
of the past and the reality of today are the origin of that nihilism which
is inundating us. Nihilism is the other side of the hope for a man-made
paradise. We have arrived on the other side of the coin."(19)
The philosophers of the Enlightenment vehemently refused to accept the
reproach that atheism means amorality, and the prognosis that the decline
of religion would finally cause the devaluation of moral values. Pierre
Josephe Proudhon [1809-1865] wrote: "L'homme est destiné à
vivre sans religion.... La loi morale est éternelle et absolue....
Eh, qui donc aujourd'hui oserai attaquer la morale?"(20)
The values were regarded as natural, self-evident and generally valid for
all time—eternal truths arrived at by reason. However, what seemed to
be self-evident and absolutely valid has been critically questioned little
by little, and finally dissolved. The absoluteness of moral obligations
was abandoned and replaced by a pluralism of non-obligatory value concepts,
by relativism and subjectivism. A non-obligatory, pluralistic ethics, however,
is a "Lichtenberg knife," a knife without a handle and a blade.(21)
The implications of this process are obvious: if rational proof is the
only gauge for evaluating an ethical norm, then a norm that commands positive
action can only be recognized if it is of proven advantage to all; equally,
one that has a prohibitive function can only be recognized when the social
harm of the prohibited act is evident to all. This means that any value
you are pleading for is in need of rational justification. However, even
if you can supply a norm which you believe is based on cogent reasons,
you never can convince another person who has a different view. This is
why Bahá'ís face endless discussions when they offer their
moral concepts. Although the prohibition of narcotics and alcoholic beverages
can be justified on the basis of an abundance of medical and social reasons,
most people react with criticism. And if you mention a virtue like chastity,
a word which has almost completely fallen out of usage, it gives rise to
mockery or biting sarcasm: you are looked at as if you had come from another
planet.
This critical attitude of the mind, which recognises none but rational
values automatically rejects the notion of unconditional duties and the
existence of generally binding norms. Every human being is then the supreme
judge of the norms of his life-style and of the social order. That is the
meaning of the new ideal of "self-determination" and "maturity," whereas
the recognition of an authority which cannot be questioned, and the observance
of its commandments is contemptuously dismissed as "immaturity":
The illusion is cherished that everyone by means of his
own mental efforts will be able to realize what he should do and will be
capable of making a free choice for or against what should be done... Thus,
the individual with his subjective desires, his chance experiences, his
restricted knowledge and his limited understanding is granted the right
to consider himself the measure of all things.(22)
The consequences:
The belief in absolute duties is replaced by calculating
adaptation to the contingencies of the day. The love for ideals which demand
that man overcome his egocentricity cannot emerge in a society in which
it is considered 'progressive' to doubt everything. As this love dwindles,
so does the motivation to exert oneself in ethical areas and the energy
to devote oneself unselfishly to greater tasks... In such a spiritual climate,
the growth of egotism is accompanied by the spread of pessimism and the
foreboding of destruction. One becomes indifferent to the welfare of others
and is only concerned to get the best for oneself as long as this is still
possible.(23)
The emancipation of morals (from religion) which appeared at the beginning
of modern times was followed by the emancipation of man (from morals).
When value systems are separated from the soil of divine revelation, they
shatter. Without God, morality has no foundation, no hold, no support.
Dostoevsky was referring to this consequence when he had Ivan Karamazov
say: "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. If there is
no God, then nothing matters."(24)
III.
The need for ethic, though, is increasingly recognised. Compared to
decades of virtual silence on the subject, philosophers are now focusing
on it again, indicated by the increasing number of publications in the
field. However, all the secular attempts of moral philosophy to found a
rational ethical system which is both practicable and generally obligatory
have failed. Its failure, in which British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre
recognizes the very cause of the crisis of Western civilisation,(25)
is because no moral rules can be deduced conclusively from an abstract
concept of man, from man's "dignity." Reason is not able to make "thou
shalt" statements which are clear and acceptable to unanimous agreement.
The question of man's "dignity" cannot be answered without reference to
a clear concept of man. The nature of man, however, is a question beyond
rational, empirical, and scientific knowledge. The concepts offered by
the humanities are focused on man's biological nature. They reduce man
to his biological, chemical, and anatomical elements and deny his freedom
and his dignity. B.F. Skinner's well-known work Beyond Freedom and Dignity(26)
demonstrates this denial of guilt, responsibility, and the existence of
objective values. Moreover, moral obligations based on reason alone, even
if they could be made evident, cannot be invested with the inner authority
that urges the individual to comply with standards created by himself:
"Why should man shy away from barriers which he or his kind have erected?"(27)
With each day it is becoming increasingly evident that mankind's survival
is not an issue of technology and pragmatism, but one of new binding values
and goals for the individual, of political actions based on a set of generally
accepted values appropriate to the conditions of a global society. Bertolt
Brecht's slogan "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral!"(28)
has been disproved by historical experience. The states of the former Soviet
Union have painfully shown that without morals there may be no more "grub".
Western relief aimed at old people and children in Russian cities nearly
failed when corrupt officials stole or sold charity on the black market.
What is to be done? How can dying morality be revived? How can people
be motivated to submit themselves to norms which demand much of them? How
can they be induced to do good and to shun evil? What can cause them not
to lie, deceive, or steal? What can cause people to overcome greed, envy,
and hatred, to restrain their basic instincts, to resist the temptations
of corruption, to sacrifice for others, to be "a good man" in a world where
"Supplies are scarce and human beings base?"(29)
Normative ethics have always been based on religion's system of trans-cendental
values and ideals. Religion translates values into standards of behaviour,
passes them on by education to the young and keeps them alive in the consciousness
of society. The question of whether man possesses an innate sense of justice
was put to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He answered in the negative and stressed
man's dependence on divine revelation:
If we ponder the lessons of history it will become evident
that this very sense of honour and dignity is itself one of the bounties
deriving from the instructions of the Prophets of God. We also observe
in infants the signs of aggression and lawlessness, and that if a child
is deprived of a teacher's instructions his undesirable qualities increase
from one moment to the next. It is therefore clear that the emergence of
this natural sense of human dignity and honour is the result of education....
Even if we grant for the sake of the argument that instinctive intelligence
and the innate moral quality would prevent wrong-doing, it is obvious that
individuals so characterized are as rare as the philosopher's stone....
Universal benefits derive from the grace of the Divine religions, for they
lead their true followers to sincerity of intents, to high purpose, to
purity and spotless honour, to surpassing kindness and compassion, to the
keeping of their covenants when they have covenanted, to concern for the
rights of others, to liberality, to justice in every respect of life, to
humanity and philanthropy, to valour and to unflagging efforts in the service
of mankind. It is religion, to sum up, which produces all human virtues,
and it is these virtues which are the bright candles of civilisation.(30)
A reconstruction of morals comes only from a living faith. Values can only
be absolutely valid if they are not in need of rational justification,
if they are not in contradiction to reason, but at the same time are immune
to criticism. That means that they are based on God as the law-giver. Nothing
but such a morality can ever hope to overcome the prevailing pluralism
and relativism of all moral concepts, and to motivate people to accept
and obey it.
Mankind's global society is in need of a global code of ethics. Hans
Küng, a renowned Catholic theologian, has acknowledged that this world
only has a chance of survival if it is endowed with a common, universal
standard of values, ideals and goals. In his brilliant book, Global
Responsibility, he presents the opinion that such a world ethos can
only be based on the common values of the great world religions, as only
religion can provide man with an apodeictic, categorical, absolute norm
which is also practical.(31) The recent
centenary celebration of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago has
approved a "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic." Seven thousand representatives
of the world's religions signed and solemnly presented a statement of a
minimal ethic on which all could agree.(32)
In fact, the project of a "global ethic" began 120 years ago when Bahá'u'lláh
revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Charter of a divine legislation.
The Bahá'í Faith offers a new ethical system, a new hierarchy
of values for global society, anchored in divine revelation. It provides
mankind with a new spiritual impulse for a new ethos. As in the past, this
new ethos is brought about by the Word of God, which, as Bahá'u'lláh
says, "alone, can claim the distinction of being endowed with the capacity
required for so great and far-reaching a change"(33)
for the spiritual rebirth of man. Bahá'u'lláh declares its
power to transform: "The day is approaching when God will have, by an act
of His Will, raised up a race of man the nature of which is inscrutable
to all save God, the All-Powerful, the Self-Subsisting."(34)
End Notes
Based on a presentation made at the National Bahá'í Conference in Llandudno, Wales, October 1993. It will be followed by the paper "The New Morality" in the next Review.
Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre: 1992) 181; Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978) 11:27; Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1978) 4:2, 143:3.
Kitáb-i-Aqdas 181.
(Oxford: George Ronald, 1983) 33ff.
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1975) 31.
Aggression, (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1973) 13.
Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London: Heinemann, 1975) 245.
"in luxury, leisure and lust," from the poem, "L'invitation au voyage," in Les Fleurs du Mal, XLIX. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
In 1991 and 1993, more than 500,000 left the Church in Germany.
For further discussion, see Schaefer, Imperishable Dominion chapter 1.
Heiner Barz, Postmoderne Religion am Beispiel der jungen Generation in den Alten Bundesländern, mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Luckmann, Teil 2 des Forschungsberichts "Jugend und Religion", (Opladen 1992) vol. 2, 137, 172, 251, 261.
Theodor Greene, The Historical Context and Religious Significance of Kant's Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) ix.
Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera," in From the Modern Repertoire, ed. Eric Bentley, Series two (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1949) scene 1.
On the secular salvation, cf. Schaefer, Imperishable 10ff.
One of the most prominent contemporary German philosophers in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1985) 143.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (London: George Unwin & Allen, 1924) no. 343.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (London: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1968) 1,2.
Wolfgang Brezinka, Erziehung und Kulturrevolution. Die Pädagogik der Neuen Linken, 2d rev. ed. (Ernst Reinhardt Verlag: München-Basel, 1976) 46.
Wolfgang Kraus, Nihilismus heute oder Die Geduld der Weltgeschichte (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer Verlag, 1985) 138.
P.-J. Proudhon, De la Création de l'ordre dans l'humanité, ou principes d'organisation politique (Paris-Besançon 1843) 38, no. 60. "Man is destined to live without religion... Moral law is eternal and absolute... Who then would dare to attack morality today?"
Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799), a physicist at the University of Göttingen, famous for his aphorisms.
Brezinka, Erziehung 16.
Ibid.
The Brothers Karamazov.
After Virtue, A Study in Moral Theory (Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1984).
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
August Messer and Max Pribilla, Katholisches und modernes Denken. Ein Gedankenaustausch über Gotteserkenntnis und Sittlichkeit zwischen August Messer und Max Pribilla SJ (Stuttgart 1924) 95.
From "The Three-Penny Opera." ("First comes the grub, then the morals" - the German is much more expressive.)
Ibid, 1st Three-Penny Finale.
'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, 2d ed. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1970) 97.
Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM, 1991).
See Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kushel, A Global Ethic; The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions (London: SCM, 1993).
Gleanings 99.
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1974) 109-110, cf. Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1971) 26
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──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Ethics for a Global Society
Udo Schaefer
published in Bahá'í Studies Review4:1
London: Association for Bahá'í Studies English-Speaking Europe, 1994
Abstract: The article deals with a process of apocalyptic dimensions: the
collapse of the moral order; the disintegration of value systems over the
last few decades; the lack of moral orientation. We are now living with
these consequences. These events came to pass precisely at the time when
the emergent world society is in need of a global ethic, a universal standard
of values, ideals and goals—a need reflected in the "Declaration toward
a Global Ethic" of the recent World Parliament of Religions in Chicago,
which outlined a "minimal ethic" based on common values of the great world
religions. However, a new hierarchy of values, a new ethic for global society
has come into the world through Bahá'u'lláh's legislation
in His revelation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.
I.
We are living in a time of a global upheaval. Everything that seemed
to be fixed and solid has been seized by the storm of change. As Bahá'u'lláh
foretold, the "world's equilibrium" has been "upset" and the "present-day
order," "lamentably defective," is being "rolled up."(2)
The collapse of the prevailing order; the radical change to a new order
of things, to a level of a greater complexity and more coherent organisation;
the breakthrough of the present world-society to a world-commonwealth integrating
all nations, to a "new World Order;"(3)
all this entails chaos and catastrophe. Many people feel that their very
existence is threatened. Many see in these events the "Horsemen of the
Apocalypse."
In this process of change, nothing has undoubtedly had such a far-reaching,
radical effect on society and human thought as the change in moral views,
ideas, and concepts which took place during the past few decades. There
are no longer reliable answers to such crucial questions as: What is man?
What is the purpose of his existence? What standards should man live by?
What is good and what is evil? What is permitted and what prohibited? There
is no moral orientation, nothing to hold on to. Within a few decades a
change in the way people think has taken place with almost breath-taking
speed. It can certainly be described as a cultural revolution when one
considers its far-reaching consequences. Norms and values which have been
established by religion, and have been handed on, kept alive and considered
absolutely valid for two thousand years, and were even recognized by the
rationalists of the Enlightenment in the 18th century as rational values,
were swept away within a few decades. After losing their transcendental
basis they were open to critical questioning, and were soon dissolved in
the acid bath of a one-dimensional rationalism, that attitude which does
not allow anything to have validity unless it can be established by empirical
reason. I have described this process of disintegration of the value systems
and its consequences in my book The Imperishable Dominion: The Bahá'í
Faith and the Future of Mankind.(4)
Its end result is a spiritual vacuum, which is becoming increasingly evident,
and a lack of moral orientation, which is threatening society from inside.
Mankind's most crucial problems such as the ecological crisis, the population
explosion, the economic injustice of the present system of world economics
and the resulting North-South conflict, tyranny and despotism, civil war,
and above all the outbursts of irrational violence in every part of the
world —these problems of man's survival can only be solved on a worldwide
basis or not at all. But at the very same time as nations are challenged
to develop a co-operative global system capable of acting in solidarity,
society is rapidly disintegrating and losing its structures. The bonds
which hold society together are weakening constantly, living together with
others is becoming increasingly more difficult, and the number of conflicts
is ever on the rise.
Probably nothing shows the decline of traditional morals and the sickness
of our society as clearly as the new dimension of evil with which we are
confronted: the brutalization of our world by the increase in violence.
A British writer, Gordon Rattray Taylor, described this process in the
1970s in his book How to Avoid the Future and stated: "Just as high
temperature warns us that all is not well in the body, so violence is an
indication that something is wrong in society."(5)
This phenomenon confronts us in the rapidly increasing readiness to settle
conflicts with violence. Violence may well be as old as humanity, but its
impact within highly technological societies, its saturation in the media,
and its presence in our daily lives, is new. Friedrich Hacker, in his best-seller
on violence, described its nature, and the extent to which violence has
become part of our lives.
The most horrifying dimension of modern brutalization
is not that individual and collective violence flares up more frequently...but
that it is becoming more and more common and customary. Violence has become
an everyday, natural trivial event, a banal trifle.... We are already so
insensible that it needs a significant escalation of violence or especially
dramatic acts of brutality to rouse us up out of our dull indifference,
which supposedly derives from our feeling of helplessness.(6)
A society progressively loses its cohesion and is destined to perish, if
there are no ultimate values, no absolute obligations, if there is no civic
sense (which was called "civitas" by the ancient Romans), that "spontaneous
willingness to obey the law, to respect the rights of the others, to forego
the temptations of private enrichment at the expense of the public weal."(7)
Society cannot survive if its members have lost the ability to share and
sacrifice, if everyone furthers only his own rights and pursues his own
interests, if the highest aim in life is the utopia of living in luxe,
calme et volupté, as Baudelaire defined it,(8)
if society is based on hedonism and egotism.
The cultural crisis of the West, announced and analysed by philosophers
like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Spengler, has developed into a global
crisis of human civilisation, which endangers the survival of mankind.
What is the cause of this process and where is it leading us?
II.
At some time or other in his phylogenesis, before recorded history,
man escaped from the barriers of his instincts. He was no longer exposed
to the compulsions of nature. He gained freedom and then had to gain control
over his urges by conscious action, a uniquely human endeavour; the animal
does not act, it reacts.
Man's grandeur and dignity are his freedom. However, this is also what
endangers him. In gaining freedom he lost the automatic security of animal
instincts. From then, he had to derive his direction from values. All human
societies have systems of generally accepted values at their disposal,
which provide goals, means, and orientation for the individual as well
as for society. History reveals that mankind's great value systems are
rooted in the great historic religions and their civilisations. Western
civilisation is largely a genuinely Christian one, although the contribution
of Judaism, the culture of antiquity, and later, Islam was significant.
The values and standards people followed were an integral part of their
faith, from which they also obtained their highest motivation for moral
conduct.
For 300 years, however, the foundation of these values, the Christian
Faith, has been in retreat. It is no longer the standard and the centre
of life; it is drifting to the periphery. Atheism has become a political
movement. For seventy years, in socialist countries a militant, missionary
atheism was the dominant ingredient of state doctrine. In these countries,
religion survived in the underground; several generations grew up without
any religious education. However, in liberal democracies too, religious
traditions are withering. Symptoms of the decay of Christendom are seen
in the dramatic exodus from the Church—in Germany every year some hundred
thousands of Catholics and Protestants resign from Church membership.(9)
Today most parents no longer impart a religious consciousness to their
children; religion is no longer discussed in families. Church leaders frankly
admit that Europe is no longer a Christian continent.(10)
This crisis is especially reflected in the increasing rejection of institutionalised
Christianity among the youth who have turned instead to materialism and
self-centredness. A study commissioned by the Protestant Church, Heiner
Barz, professor at the University of Heidelberg, concludes that the younger
generation rejects any doctrine and suspects all traditions received from
their parents and any institutions. In the Church they see primarily a
"power apparatus" identical with that of the Party, the State, or the tax
office. According to Barz, the Christian image of Jesus and the symbols
of Christianity are of little relevance, its teachings frequently unknown,
and the youth are either ignorant of the concept of "sin" or dismiss it
as "outdated."(11)
The crisis of Christianity and, in its wake, the crisis of morals has
been on the way for a long time, at least since the European Enlightenment,
that Copernican revolution of thought, which began in the 17th century
and moulded the West. This new attitude was based on a belief in the power
of reason, on the conviction of the absolute certainty of rational knowledge:
"Faith in the old presuppositions and authorities, for so long considered
valid beyond question, gave way to a spirit of criticism. Reason claimed
to be autonomous and set itself up as the unique court of appeal."(12)
The spirit of modernism, which made a method of doubt, has profoundly changed
the world. It was the ideal for man in his newly-attained independence
and maturity to be liberated from prejudice and preconceived ideas and
at the same time to hold a commitment to methodological discipline and
absolute objectivity. This new way of thought has laid the foundation of
our scientific-technical civilisation. In the field of law we owe to it
great victories over barbarism: the principles of equality before the law
and of the separation of powers, the triumphant advance of democracy, the
abolition of torture and the humanisation of penal law, in short, the modern
constitutional state, a state which binds the power of the ruler to the
law and protects the citizen from governmental arbitrariness.
However, the spirit of modernism is also responsible for the deep crisis
of faith and, in its wake, the crisis of morals. Doubt was cast upon the
Christian revelation, religion was declared to be superfluous, even detrimental.
Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it in his drama "Galileo Galilei": "Belief has
prevailed for a thousand years, but now doubt has taken its place.... Doubt
is cast on time-honoured truths, and what always used to be taken for granted
is now questioned."(13) It is one of the
central dogmas of the philosophy of the Enlightenment that religion is
destined to wither away. Nietzsche's formula "God is dead!" has become
the slogan of the century. Secular society—a society in which religion
has been banned—and the mature autonomous man, i.e. an individual emancipated
from the traditions of the past and absolutely self-determining, have become
the goal and direction of the people.
Belief in God has been replaced by belief in reason and human progress,
by faith in the completion of history, by science and technology. Messianic
expectations have been replaced by the utopia of a man-made paradise. Man's
conviction that he is able to create a better world, the "Messianic Kingdom,"
by rational analysis and political action have superseded the transcendental
promises of salvation.(14) Thus, the world
has been made rational and technical, and, as a consequence, utilitarian.
What remains is a vast emptiness in which man is cut off from his metaphysical
origins, and left impoverished with merely the affairs of this world to
care about: discovery, invention, progress, achievement, production, and
consumption.
Now, at the end of the second millennium, the optimistic belief in the
omnipotence of reason and the Enlightenment, in science and progress, has
dwindled. Jürgen Habermas has diagnosed perplexity among intellectuals
and politicians, a lack of confidence in Western civilisation(15).
The deficiencies of an unbalanced Enlightenment are becoming increasingly
evident. The fading Christian faith has left a vacuum which has, as Nietzsche
clearly predicted, seized everything which is built on this faith: "For
example our entire European morality."(16)
Nietzsche called this phenomenon of the devaluation of the highest values
and the lack of meaning nihilism: "The aim is lacking; 'why' finds
no answer."(17) Nihilism is the conviction
"that nothing has any value, that no standards are binding, that no purpose
exists, that there is nothing worth living or dying for, that everything
is futile".(18) Russian writers like Ivan
Turgeniev and Fyodor Dostoevsky described the spreading spiritual vacuum,
and European thinkers from the nineteenth century clearly anticipated its
consequences. Nihilism has become the shaping power of our civilisation:
"The frustration, the embitterment, the hatred of history, of the illusions
of the past and the reality of today are the origin of that nihilism which
is inundating us. Nihilism is the other side of the hope for a man-made
paradise. We have arrived on the other side of the coin."(19)
The philosophers of the Enlightenment vehemently refused to accept the
reproach that atheism means amorality, and the prognosis that the decline
of religion would finally cause the devaluation of moral values. Pierre
Josephe Proudhon [1809-1865] wrote: "L'homme est destiné à
vivre sans religion.... La loi morale est éternelle et absolue....
Eh, qui donc aujourd'hui oserai attaquer la morale?"(20)
The values were regarded as natural, self-evident and generally valid for
all time—eternal truths arrived at by reason. However, what seemed to
be self-evident and absolutely valid has been critically questioned little
by little, and finally dissolved. The absoluteness of moral obligations
was abandoned and replaced by a pluralism of non-obligatory value concepts,
by relativism and subjectivism. A non-obligatory, pluralistic ethics, however,
is a "Lichtenberg knife," a knife without a handle and a blade.(21)
The implications of this process are obvious: if rational proof is the
only gauge for evaluating an ethical norm, then a norm that commands positive
action can only be recognized if it is of proven advantage to all; equally,
one that has a prohibitive function can only be recognized when the social
harm of the prohibited act is evident to all. This means that any value
you are pleading for is in need of rational justification. However, even
if you can supply a norm which you believe is based on cogent reasons,
you never can convince another person who has a different view. This is
why Bahá'ís face endless discussions when they offer their
moral concepts. Although the prohibition of narcotics and alcoholic beverages
can be justified on the basis of an abundance of medical and social reasons,
most people react with criticism. And if you mention a virtue like chastity,
a word which has almost completely fallen out of usage, it gives rise to
mockery or biting sarcasm: you are looked at as if you had come from another
planet.
This critical attitude of the mind, which recognises none but rational
values automatically rejects the notion of unconditional duties and the
existence of generally binding norms. Every human being is then the supreme
judge of the norms of his life-style and of the social order. That is the
meaning of the new ideal of "self-determination" and "maturity," whereas
the recognition of an authority which cannot be questioned, and the observance
of its commandments is contemptuously dismissed as "immaturity":
The illusion is cherished that everyone by means of his
own mental efforts will be able to realize what he should do and will be
capable of making a free choice for or against what should be done... Thus,
the individual with his subjective desires, his chance experiences, his
restricted knowledge and his limited understanding is granted the right
to consider himself the measure of all things.(22)
The consequences:
The belief in absolute duties is replaced by calculating
adaptation to the contingencies of the day. The love for ideals which demand
that man overcome his egocentricity cannot emerge in a society in which
it is considered 'progressive' to doubt everything. As this love dwindles,
so does the motivation to exert oneself in ethical areas and the energy
to devote oneself unselfishly to greater tasks... In such a spiritual climate,
the growth of egotism is accompanied by the spread of pessimism and the
foreboding of destruction. One becomes indifferent to the welfare of others
and is only concerned to get the best for oneself as long as this is still
possible.(23)
The emancipation of morals (from religion) which appeared at the beginning
of modern times was followed by the emancipation of man (from morals).
When value systems are separated from the soil of divine revelation, they
shatter. Without God, morality has no foundation, no hold, no support.
Dostoevsky was referring to this consequence when he had Ivan Karamazov
say: "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. If there is
no God, then nothing matters."(24)
III.
The need for ethic, though, is increasingly recognised. Compared to
decades of virtual silence on the subject, philosophers are now focusing
on it again, indicated by the increasing number of publications in the
field. However, all the secular attempts of moral philosophy to found a
rational ethical system which is both practicable and generally obligatory
have failed. Its failure, in which British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre
recognizes the very cause of the crisis of Western civilisation,(25)
is because no moral rules can be deduced conclusively from an abstract
concept of man, from man's "dignity." Reason is not able to make "thou
shalt" statements which are clear and acceptable to unanimous agreement.
The question of man's "dignity" cannot be answered without reference to
a clear concept of man. The nature of man, however, is a question beyond
rational, empirical, and scientific knowledge. The concepts offered by
the humanities are focused on man's biological nature. They reduce man
to his biological, chemical, and anatomical elements and deny his freedom
and his dignity. B.F. Skinner's well-known work Beyond Freedom and Dignity(26)
demonstrates this denial of guilt, responsibility, and the existence of
objective values. Moreover, moral obligations based on reason alone, even
if they could be made evident, cannot be invested with the inner authority
that urges the individual to comply with standards created by himself:
"Why should man shy away from barriers which he or his kind have erected?"(27)
With each day it is becoming increasingly evident that mankind's survival
is not an issue of technology and pragmatism, but one of new binding values
and goals for the individual, of political actions based on a set of generally
accepted values appropriate to the conditions of a global society. Bertolt
Brecht's slogan "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral!"(28)
has been disproved by historical experience. The states of the former Soviet
Union have painfully shown that without morals there may be no more "grub".
Western relief aimed at old people and children in Russian cities nearly
failed when corrupt officials stole or sold charity on the black market.
What is to be done? How can dying morality be revived? How can people
be motivated to submit themselves to norms which demand much of them? How
can they be induced to do good and to shun evil? What can cause them not
to lie, deceive, or steal? What can cause people to overcome greed, envy,
and hatred, to restrain their basic instincts, to resist the temptations
of corruption, to sacrifice for others, to be "a good man" in a world where
"Supplies are scarce and human beings base?"(29)
Normative ethics have always been based on religion's system of trans-cendental
values and ideals. Religion translates values into standards of behaviour,
passes them on by education to the young and keeps them alive in the consciousness
of society. The question of whether man possesses an innate sense of justice
was put to 'Abdu'l-Bahá. He answered in the negative and stressed
man's dependence on divine revelation:
If we ponder the lessons of history it will become evident
that this very sense of honour and dignity is itself one of the bounties
deriving from the instructions of the Prophets of God. We also observe
in infants the signs of aggression and lawlessness, and that if a child
is deprived of a teacher's instructions his undesirable qualities increase
from one moment to the next. It is therefore clear that the emergence of
this natural sense of human dignity and honour is the result of education....
Even if we grant for the sake of the argument that instinctive intelligence
and the innate moral quality would prevent wrong-doing, it is obvious that
individuals so characterized are as rare as the philosopher's stone....
Universal benefits derive from the grace of the Divine religions, for they
lead their true followers to sincerity of intents, to high purpose, to
purity and spotless honour, to surpassing kindness and compassion, to the
keeping of their covenants when they have covenanted, to concern for the
rights of others, to liberality, to justice in every respect of life, to
humanity and philanthropy, to valour and to unflagging efforts in the service
of mankind. It is religion, to sum up, which produces all human virtues,
and it is these virtues which are the bright candles of civilisation.(30)
A reconstruction of morals comes only from a living faith. Values can only
be absolutely valid if they are not in need of rational justification,
if they are not in contradiction to reason, but at the same time are immune
to criticism. That means that they are based on God as the law-giver. Nothing
but such a morality can ever hope to overcome the prevailing pluralism
and relativism of all moral concepts, and to motivate people to accept
and obey it.
Mankind's global society is in need of a global code of ethics. Hans
Küng, a renowned Catholic theologian, has acknowledged that this world
only has a chance of survival if it is endowed with a common, universal
standard of values, ideals and goals. In his brilliant book, Global
Responsibility, he presents the opinion that such a world ethos can
only be based on the common values of the great world religions, as only
religion can provide man with an apodeictic, categorical, absolute norm
which is also practical.(31) The recent
centenary celebration of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago has
approved a "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic." Seven thousand representatives
of the world's religions signed and solemnly presented a statement of a
minimal ethic on which all could agree.(32)
In fact, the project of a "global ethic" began 120 years ago when Bahá'u'lláh
revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Charter of a divine legislation.
The Bahá'í Faith offers a new ethical system, a new hierarchy
of values for global society, anchored in divine revelation. It provides
mankind with a new spiritual impulse for a new ethos. As in the past, this
new ethos is brought about by the Word of God, which, as Bahá'u'lláh
says, "alone, can claim the distinction of being endowed with the capacity
required for so great and far-reaching a change"(33)
for the spiritual rebirth of man. Bahá'u'lláh declares its
power to transform: "The day is approaching when God will have, by an act
of His Will, raised up a race of man the nature of which is inscrutable
to all save God, the All-Powerful, the Self-Subsisting."(34)
End Notes
Based on a presentation made at the National Bahá'í Conference in Llandudno, Wales, October 1993. It will be followed by the paper "The New Morality" in the next Review.
Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre: 1992) 181; Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978) 11:27; Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1978) 4:2, 143:3.
Kitáb-i-Aqdas 181.
(Oxford: George Ronald, 1983) 33ff.
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1975) 31.
Aggression, (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1973) 13.
Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London: Heinemann, 1975) 245.
"in luxury, leisure and lust," from the poem, "L'invitation au voyage," in Les Fleurs du Mal, XLIX. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
In 1991 and 1993, more than 500,000 left the Church in Germany.
For further discussion, see Schaefer, Imperishable Dominion chapter 1.
Heiner Barz, Postmoderne Religion am Beispiel der jungen Generation in den Alten Bundesländern, mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Luckmann, Teil 2 des Forschungsberichts "Jugend und Religion", (Opladen 1992) vol. 2, 137, 172, 251, 261.
Theodor Greene, The Historical Context and Religious Significance of Kant's Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) ix.
Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera," in From the Modern Repertoire, ed. Eric Bentley, Series two (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1949) scene 1.
On the secular salvation, cf. Schaefer, Imperishable 10ff.
One of the most prominent contemporary German philosophers in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1985) 143.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (London: George Unwin & Allen, 1924) no. 343.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (London: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1968) 1,2.
Wolfgang Brezinka, Erziehung und Kulturrevolution. Die Pädagogik der Neuen Linken, 2d rev. ed. (Ernst Reinhardt Verlag: München-Basel, 1976) 46.
Wolfgang Kraus, Nihilismus heute oder Die Geduld der Weltgeschichte (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer Verlag, 1985) 138.
P.-J. Proudhon, De la Création de l'ordre dans l'humanité, ou principes d'organisation politique (Paris-Besançon 1843) 38, no. 60. "Man is destined to live without religion... Moral law is eternal and absolute... Who then would dare to attack morality today?"
Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799), a physicist at the University of Göttingen, famous for his aphorisms.
Brezinka, Erziehung 16.
Ibid.
The Brothers Karamazov.
After Virtue, A Study in Moral Theory (Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1984).
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
August Messer and Max Pribilla, Katholisches und modernes Denken. Ein Gedankenaustausch über Gotteserkenntnis und Sittlichkeit zwischen August Messer und Max Pribilla SJ (Stuttgart 1924) 95.
From "The Three-Penny Opera." ("First comes the grub, then the morals" - the German is much more expressive.)
Ibid, 1st Three-Penny Finale.
'Abdu'l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, 2d ed. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1970) 97.
Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM, 1991).
See Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kushel, A Global Ethic; The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions (London: SCM, 1993).
Gleanings 99.
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1974) 109-110, cf. Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1971) 26
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