In this sub-blog, I will cover St. Alphonsus Liguori's "Moral Theology" with an interest in the question of judgement in arts and letters as an aspect of prudence. 

Here, we focus on the ambiguity of the concept of "good" which any reader of Plato knows can mean two distinct meanings: something that pleases (or has "utility") as opposed to good in the moral sense.

 

My objective in this sub-blog is the following: to explore how this root divergence in the two meanings is the result of our fallen state and 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.  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.

 

More specifically, I will align Liguori's course of thought with classical works of literary criticism as it approaches the literary genre of the novel.  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 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.  Sensing this dual decline, I hope to channel the "Prince of Moral Theologians" to understand 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.  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 history lesson: By focusing more specifically on the category of distinction (or "taste") as an ethical category, 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.  How is this to properly work to elevate us as moral agents?  How can it go wrong and end up infusing pride into the heart and destroying charity?   So much pivots on our response to these literary encounters where we are said to experience "growth"!

 

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 everyone?  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)? 

 

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.

 

As such, this sub-blog provides an alternative to the Literary "School of Resentment", a kind of perverse secularized Calvinism, 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 on their own terms.

 

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.  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:  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.  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.  It begins in short within the confessional.

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...]