THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF MORAL REASONING
Each person is a being immersed in a web of living beings, in a physical universe, and in a society of other human beings. Each person, as a physical, chemical, biological, and social being, is the product of both nature and nurture. Each is a part within a whole that is greater than any of the parts.
But there is a sense in which each person is also a totality unto themself, possessed of their own meaning and authoring their own story. A person is a being who questions both who they are and who they want to become. (1)1
Presupposing that coming fully alive is the goal of a person's life, it follows that each person is a dynamic system of needs, the fulfillment of which is a matter (to some extent) of reflection and choice as we struggle toward the coming into existenc e of who we are. These needs which self-realization imposes are prior to and sometimes opposed to our wants. We have the capacity to both want what is not needed, and to not want what is truly needed for fulfillment. Reality both promise s a person fulfillment, and threatens to destroy them. The promise and the threat that reality offers are real apart from whether the person perceives this. To embrace reality as promising, and to restrain that embrace insofaras that reality can destroy the self, is the most fundamental activity of the moral life. This activity involves reflective discovery, pursuit and flight. It involves insight and free choice of the alternatives of fulfillment or emptiness. It involves wanting w hat is needed for fulfillment, and not wanting what is not needed, or what is destructive. The option of destroying the self always remains an alternative choice.
Considered under this aspect of a moral self that is the product of reflective free choices, we can define a human being as follows: "A person is a being charged with the responsibility of bringing the self into existence insofaras this coming into existence is the product of a reflective free choice." To have this capacity of intelligent freedom is to be a person.
But we are bodily beings emerging through evolution out of the world of both nature and nurture, yet never being separated from them. Our human self-awareness and freedom emerge only at high points of a very complex process, much of which is subco nscious and part of the determination of nature.
This emergence, or the lack thereof, is the essence of each person's moral story. The actualization of intelligent freedom and the manifestation of a unique moral personality is the drama of how that person's life extends into a "future" while bea ring the unique biography of personal choices. To be truly human I must be truly myself. I must live out my life, taking responsibility for its human richness or poverty.
Accepting the idea that a person is a being charged with the responsibility of reaching for the fulfillment of their potential, and accepting the idea that to reach their fulfillment they must embrace reality while simultaneously being being a ware of reality's power to destroy human life, we come to the judgment that each person ought to pursue all that is fulfilling, while avoiding all that is destructive. Note the use of the words "fulfilling," and "destructive." They are used with t he intention of avoiding the words "good," and "evil." The reason is that the use of the words "good," and "evil," tends to be interpreted religiously. In the present context they are used without religious significance. The presupposition here is that the meaning of human life is to come fully alive, and that the effort to do this emerges from the life of intelligent freedom, apart from every other aspect of personal development following upon the determinations of either nature or nurture.
The human being is not yet all that he or she ought to be, insofaras this obligation is derived from the demands of fulfillment. The primary natural agent responsible for the bringing of this fulfilled moral self into existence is the person themself, precisely as they are possessed of the capacity of intelligent freedom.
Granting the validity of the preceding, and turning our intellects to the question of how life ought to be lived, we see that if the effort toward fulfillment is to be fruitful, it is immediately evident that a person ought pursue and do the good, w hile avoiding evil. This is the first principle of the intellect's pursuit of moral truth. It relates to the body of moral truth as the principle of identity, i.e. a being is what it is, relates to the whole order of speculative thought.
All intellectual endeavors of a speculative nature, such as the order of mathematical and scientific reasoning., have this first principle, i.e. the principle of identity, as their necessary presupposition. If, on the contrary, it is held that a being is whatever each person perceives it to be, then the search for declarative truth is impossible. Likewise, if we deny the validity of this first moral principle which states that a person ought to pursue and do good, while avoiding evil, it would follow that all pursuit of moral or prescriptive truth is impossible. If I hold that there is no good or evil but thinking makes it so, I am stating that the pursuit of objectively true or false moral judgments is impossible.
Note that this first moral principle has no specific moral content. It does not tell us, precisely, which acts are moral and which acts are immoral. The question arises as to whether this is a meaningless principle. precisely because it has no specif ic moral content. It simply does not tell us anything about what is right or what is wrong about human behavior. Reflecting upon the principle, it seems obvious that while is has no specific moral content, it is the necessary principle that is the found ation upon which the whole pursuit of moral truth is based. It says in effect: "Human actions do not become good or evil simply by reason of one or many persons denominating them to be such. Human actions, reflectively and freely chosen, have the capaci ty to enhance or diminish human life. This being true, each of us has the obligation, to the extent that this is possible, to pursue and do our lives in such a manner as to enhance the humanity of the self that is brought into existence, and to avoid tho se free choices that are destructive of our humanity." While having no specific content, the principle requires of us that we think carefully about the choices that we make, with the understanding that we are the primary agents of the individual moral se lves that we become by reason of our conscious free choices. We have the capacity to make ourselves into good or evil people.
The doctrine of the four virtues was already considered ancient when Plato was writing his dialogues. The teaching is that for a person to become virtuous, they must develop within their character four pivotal points of moral strength. These four trai ts of character bring forth in the virtuous person habitual and reasonable responses to the various situations involved in the daily living of a human life.
As habits they are permanent dispositions allowing the virtuous person to react easily, quickly and with a certain joy. As habits they are caused by the repetition of the act. In theory the repetition of the act, being facilitate d by the initial presence of a virtuous disposition, gradually becomes a permanent quality of the virtuous person. It becomes second nature of the virtuous person to act virtuously. These qualities come to define the moral self that the person has chosen to become. The person themself, by reason of the intelligent free choices that they have made, is the primary agent of their having become a good person.
(1)1 "First and foremost, a presupposition must be clarified and then accepted, namely, the belief that a man 'ought to', in other words, that not everything in his action and behavior is well and good just as it is. It makes no sense trying to convi nce a pig it ought to act and behave 'like a real pig'. That the rude line by Gottfried Benn -- 'The crown of creation: the pig man' -- can be spoken at all and, further, hold true in such terrible ways: this fact alone shows that humanity must still realize the truly human in the domain of lived realities; it means man, as long as he existsd, 'ought to'. Of course, men can formulate the concept somewhat less agressively than Gottfried Benn. In this way, for example: 'Fire does by necessity wha t is true and right according to its being, not so man, when he is doing the good.' This is a sentence from Anselm of Canterbury's DIALOGUE ON TRUTH. Two statements are thereby made: Man is free; and (meaning is given to him regardless of his opinion o r his permission). . . To one who does not acknowledge that the human being 'is' homo sapiens in a totally different manner than water 'is' H2O; that, to the contrary, the human being ought to become what he is (and therefore not already eo ipso 'is'); th at one can speak of all other earthly creatures in the indicative, in simple statements, but, of man, if one wants to express himself on his actual reality, one can only speak in the imperative -- to him who cannot see this or does not want to admit to it s truth it would be understandably meaningless to speak at all of an 'ought to' and it would make no sense to give instructions or obligation, be it in the form of a teaching on virtue or otherwise." Josef Pieper, Originally published in DIE AKTUALITAT DE R KARDINALTUGENDEN, Munich: Kosel-Verlag, 1980