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Moral Decision Making in the 21st Century: Methods and Challenges
- Franciscan Institute Publications
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Moral Decision Making in the 21st century: MethoDs anD challenges Brian Johnstone, c.ss.r. In this presentation I am going to suggest that the experience of receiving and giving is the primary moral experience and thus the source of a moral theology that could respond to the challenges of our age. This would be a moral theology of love, not a formless love, but a love whose inner logic would be that of receiving and giving gifts. This way of approaching the topic suggests a connection with the Franciscan tradition and I will develop this in the course of my essay. I shall be invoking the thought of the French Philosopher, Jean-Luc Marion and in particular his philosophy of givenness as developed in his many works, in particular in Being Given: Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness.1 Marion is a French philosopher, recognized as a leading Catholic thinker, who is Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). He is currently the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School; also in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Social Thought at the same university. He is regarded by some as a key contributor to a postmodern theology. The tension between reason/being and love/gift, and the attribution of priority to the latter, that we 1 Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness , trans. Jeffrey Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). BRIAN JOHNSTONE 10 find in Marion’s work would recall, of course, the differences between the Thomist tradition, (the primacy of reason and being) and the Franciscan tradition (the primacy of love and the good). It would seem that Marion’s thinking is closer to the Franciscan tradition. Marion’s thought in his work, God Without Being, has been interpreted by Thomas Carlson as implying that, “Theology needs to cease being modern theology in order to become again theology like the theologies of such ancient and medieval Christian Platonists as Pseudo-Dionysius and Bonaventure .2 Marion’s more recent work has been more philosophical than theological; he is concerned to show that his work is genuinely philosophy and not a kind of disguised theology , but theological issues are still important to him. I shall now try to follow through the “Franciscan” theme of the centrality of love and the good in relation to Marion’s thinking. At this basic level, there is an important issue for Marion. According to St. Thomas, “... the good does not add anything to being [the ens] either really or conceptually, nec re nec ratione (neither in reality nor in thought).” In Marion’s view, St. Thomas here takes a position “... that is directly opposed to the anteriority, more traditionally accepted in Christian theology, of the good over the ens.” Bonaventure, however, according to Marion, still holds the traditional position and sees the last instance that permits a contemplation of God as contained in goodness.3 In God without Being, there follows a brief, highly compressed commentary on Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum.4 From this there emerges the no2 Marion, God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), xii. 3 Marion, God without Being, 74. 4 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Itinerarium VI, 1. The English translation is from Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, with an Introduction and Commentary by Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M., WSB II (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1956), 89:“Having considered the essential attributes of God, we must raise the eyes of our intelligence to the contuition of the most Blessed Trinity, so as to place the second Cherub opposite the first. Now just as being itself is the principal root of the vision of the essential attributes of God as well as the name through which the others become known, so the good itself is the principal foundation of the contemplation [54.81.185.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 10:02 GMT) MORAL DECISION MAKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: 11 tion that God can be thought of as the one who gives the gift of being, and hence is prior to being. What is central here, is the act or gesture of giving the gift of being.5 Thus, we might say that God is to be thought of as the giver of being, in an act of love, while being itself would be understood as given being and the ultimate horizon of understanding...