Moral Theology and the Art of Criticism
In this sub-blog, I will cover St. Alphonsus Liguori's "Moral Theology" (in consultation with St. Thomas Aquinas' Seundae Partis of the Summa Theologiae) with an interest in the question of judgement in arts and letters as an aspect of prudence. Secondarily, this sub-blog also considers more broadly the uses of literature.
Coincidentally, the topic of prudence is the focus of the classic "self-help" book of an ex-Jesuit courtier: Gracian Baltasar's "Oracle of Worldly Wisdom", but also more broadly the ideal of self-cultivation through literature and liberal learning as preparatory for deeper theological learning.
Prudence is an important virtue. Indeed, it is called a "cardinal virtue" because it steers us towards the right path. Literature is expedient because it is using other people, whether real or imaginary, to make those decisions before us. Like Dante, we don't have to fall prey to lust itself to observe the (literally) burning desire of Francesca and Paolo, right?
My objective in this sub-blog is the following: to explore how this root divergence in the two meanings of "good"-- one moral (e.g. a good deed) vs. the strictly qualitative (e.g. a good apple or a good knife)-- is the result of our fallen state and its ensuing spiritual blindness of seeing ourselves aright. It also demonstrates how the imagination (typically thought of as a medium of evil influence) can aid the development of the conscience, the practice of self-betterment, and (for Catholics) the solemnized approach to the Sacrament of Penance. This will give you the opportunity to encourage your own children to develop good taste in books, film, music and the like, but also to become more adept at the devotional approach to the Sacrament of Penance. After all, every examination of conscience involves the use of our imagination in recalling the circumstances of our sins.
So, is art merely a mode of didacticism?
By no means, but the opposite extreme: that morality has no place in our leisure and mental life is also groundless.
Why is that?
At root, there is no difference in the ambiguous use of good (a favorite topic of Socrates) once we realize that we too are creatures not unlike the apple or the knife qua creatures. The difference, of course, is that we are esteemed more than those objects--- indeed, much more than they ().
This condition of being loved by our Creator for our own sakes is due to our having immortal rational souls, an intellect and a free will, that we use to understand and love God in return. In this space, I wish to identify narrative as the mode by which the moral life is articulated and reflected upon within sacred rubrics and modern literature alike. Narrative is also the basis by which one is said to "fall in love" (how often do people ask how a man and a woman met?). I posit that the Lord Himself while on Earth also taught through parables or stories that reflect the narrative basis of discursive reasoning and human knowledge. It was through stories that Jesus came to teach us about the coming of His Kingdom that was not yet realized. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like...", so we have been invited to imagine.
Another benefit of reading literature through the lens of moral theology is not to become priggish but to grasp moral relativism firmly by its horns both in the arts and letters without falling into the other extreme of moral absolutism. Now, what do I mean by that? While there are moral absolutes (see the Ten Commandments), the moral life and how it tilts from being on course to off course is very circumstantial in so far as it is particularized by each and every case. Not only that, but self-knowledge is inescapably subjective.
But does that mean that morality is itself subjective?
No. And this is what leaves us at a standstill: both moral relativism (NO actions are INTRINSICALLY "right" or "wrong") and moral absolutism (ALL actions are INTRINSICALLY "right" or "wrong") are equally false!
Quite a predicament, no?
Well, perhaps in a sense.
Baltasar Gracian and St. Alphonsus Liguori, both students of casuistry or case-based reasoning (the art of navigating between fixed principles and messy realities), can both teach us in their own way how to navigate these complex situations where circumstances complicate our understanding of how to live good and honest lives. Literature is convenient tool as we reflect upon the use of leisure to refresh and enlighten, yes, but also to discipline our affinities and tastes to find divine realities more palatable and worldly ones less so.
That is the proposition that I have laid out here: namely, that there is a spiritual approach to reading books (yes, even profane ones). I want to use the worldly wisdom of literature to show either its indebtedness to the Gospel, whether direct or indirect, or its opposition to the Living Truth in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ.
Too often, literature is viewed as morally neutral or the province of the private conscience to determine. I challenge this notion while also seeking to identify just how important it is to develop a rightly ordered conscience given just how central it is to the moral life. The conscience is the soul of the dignity of man. It is what St. Alphonse calls the "formal principle" of the law, just as the Divine Law constitutes its matter. Should we not consciously nurture it then?
More specifically, I will align Liguori's course of thought with classical works of literary criticism as it approaches the literary genre of both prose (esp. "the novel") and poetry. I do so because I believe that "book reading" came to eclipse the liturgy as the principle means of moral education in modern people between the 18th and 20th centuries as a corollary to liberal modernity. Of course, this triumph was short-lived, since the habit of reading is also dying out to follow suit of the decline of formal religious observance! These downward developments in Western culture, growing irreligiosity and illiteracy, are intimately connected, I'd wager, and follow the same cultural dynamic of decadence. Sensing this dual decline within the heart of man, I hope to channel the "Prince of Moral Theologians" together with the artful courtier and his insight into the human condition can jointly assist us in understanding the forces that shape and deform our societies at the level of culture.
Liguori's magnum opus, which earned him the title of "Doctor of the Church", provides a step-by-step outline of how to reach a moral decision within "a system of principles guarantees the dignity of a personal conscience." I use this quote specifically to show that liberalism holds no monopoly over such concerns of human dignity. That so much of the Catholic world grovels to the modern understanding of "freedom" is all the more reprehensible given that it is not only reflective of cowardice in the face of anti-Christian animus but an impious lack of deference towards your Catholic forbearers who had a much more sophisticated grasp of psychology. More so than anything penned by academic philosophers, St. Alphonse's work constitutes one of the most elaborate systems of applied ethics that can set a benchmark not only for Catholics (its main audience), but for ordinary citizens in the sense that it is concerned with the "common good" in the more immediate term.
Following the advent of the printing press, the sentimental education of historical city-dwelling bourgeoisie was brokered first through biblical reading and subsequently through secular literature--- the novel in particular--- where the interior life was placed on display without any nearby audience. The novel placed the reader in isolation alongside their conscience and the mental life of fictive characters just as the confessional did so with the penitent and his priest in a more religious context. This is why some literary historians have linked the historical development of the Novel to the secularization of confessional practices of Latin (Western) Christianity (more to come on this topic!).
However, my intents and purposes are more specific than providing a mere history lesson: By focusing more specifically on the category of distinction (or "taste") as an ethical category [where "good" in an aesthetic and ethical sense become re-unified], I am interested in how literature, art, and music can hone the conscience and infuse the human person with a stronger claim to dignity of the Imago Dei both in themselves and in others in an involved but disinterested way that place the particulars of our lives in their proper context.
More often than not, distinction in the sense of Pierre Bourdeau is a form of cultural subjugation, societal gatekeeping, and class assertion of superiority (in the sense of "I'm better than you", "You are an ignorant simpleton, whereas I am sophisticated", etc., etc.). But must it necessarily be so? Can what Matthew Arnold called "the best that is known and thought in the world" be channeled for the moral regeneration of society instead to uplift willing souls? Friedrich Schiller in his now forgotten "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" (1794) seemed to think so, but what if we placed this task of literature not in the hands of untrustworthy revolutionaries (as Schiller intended) so much as traditionalists who wished to preserve what we already know to be good, worthwhile, and of ultimate concern (that is, in alignment with the Gospel)? So much of the world's interest in "novelty" ends up being stale--- why else do people turn to the classics again and again? By my estimation, do people really need more Michael Bay films or another Avengers' franchise movie or the latest tantalizing smut tale?
To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, 'how is it that those who speak most openly about 'progress', have the hardest time defining the good?' The British Catholic wit would further comment how "Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision (to fit the world)." Chesterton is suggesting that there is something nihilistic about the fashions of "progressive modernity" and this inertia by cultural centrifuge of always changing the vision of things is best captured by the decline of literature and the ascendency of the image, the "sound bite", and other ephemera that are unshackled by the cohesive demands of rational thought. Within such a compressed medium, there is greater potential for manipulation. In an extended medium, the subject has greater latitude to think for themselves, to interpret, etc.
As such, this sub-blog provides an alternative to the Literary "School of Resentment", a kind of perverse secularized Gnosticism, whereby moral judgement and (contra-)distinction are weaponized agents of change a la "Critical Theory" that sees all sin and no salvation and which looks down upon human beings in the name of an impractical human ideal with no commitment to actual human beings.
For pedagogical purposes, what the world needs is a decidedly more mature and realistic approach to the conscience and its development in both the City of Man and the City of God. What we have instead is a kind of symbiotic cynicism-cum-sentimentality that distorts the truth through sophomoric, adolescent contempt for structure and commitment.
Such youthful energies belong to the youth, as was true in Plato's time, not to authority figures who preserve and pass down what is good and true of our culture and literary heritage! We need a corrective in how we understand the literary as a major facet of the human condition.
Little by little, the interior lives of future generations depend upon such a moral education that tells them about the heart of men rather than sowing cynicism in a world where distrust, greed, and individualism have destroyed so much of the common life already. The common life, I fear, can only be found in books--- old books.
And why is that uplifting?
Rather than relying upon a "man on horseback" to save the day, much less a "revolution", the movement of reform begins in the intimate spaces of our thoughts, hopes, and dreams that begin when we escape the present's hold upon our hearts and minds. It begins in short within the book, within the confessional as preparation for the day when we all shall be judged for what we stood for.
Let us therefore leave such a task to a saint who thought deeply about the ultimate constitution of humanity. Let us look to our good confessor for guidance!
[More to come...]