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the most significant fault lines in
cultural history opened up in the 16th
and 17th centuries with the emergence of
a characteristically modern way of
approaching life thinkers such as
Descartes and Leibniz in Spinoza and
Conte and Jefferson and many others
really affected a sea change in the way
we look at practically everything the
modern emerging up out of the classical
and medieval world now in almost all
tellings of this story from a Western
perspective this is seen as an
unmitigated good certainly when I was
coming of age outside the church and in
sort of the secular culture that's the
way the story is always told can I say
right up front that I rather
emphatically disagree with that way of
construing things now you'd be foolish
indeed not to see that several great
goods came from the modern shift
especially in the areas of science and
politics video for another day to
explore all that but certainly very good
things came out of the modern turn but I
think will be also equally foolish not
to see there are many ways the modern
turn represented a decline a declension
from classical and medieval thought and
I would say especially in the areas of
art and morality now let me get it this
way classical thought was very much
ordered along the lines of Aristotle's
four causes so aerosol said to
understand something you need to look at
four things the material cause what it's
made out of the formal cause it's sort
of essential structure the final cause
where the thing is attending and then
the efficient cause how it got that way
if you look at those four things and you
understand them adequately then you have
a good grasp of a phenomenon well one of
the marks of modernity was a sort of
mistrust of - of ourselves causes namely
the formal and the final modern thinkers
put a great stress on flux and
change think of you know the emergence
of evolution and so on that reality is
always in flux and so the formal cause
came to be questioned also many modern
thinkers most I would say question
finality is there really a purpose or
ultimate orientation to things they
doubted them the falling away of both
the formal and the final led to the
development of what we see now is a
characteristically modern form of
science which puts a huge stress on
matter what things are made out of and
the efficient cause how they got that
way now think of you know the the modern
science is the physical sciences put a
hyper stress on those two things but the
falling away of the formal and the final
had I would say a very deleterious
effect on other areas of human endeavor
as I said especially the arts and
morality look at the arts first in a
classical and medieval perspective what
was an artist doing well he was
surveying the world to see the forms the
formal structures that God the Creator
had placed in things and then the artist
was trying as best he or she could to
mimic those forms in what he or she was
producing now a very good example of
this it's interesting to me someone like
Michelangelo who had such a tremendous
grasp of the sort of rhythms and
proportions of the body it informed
certainly his painting of a human body
but even his architecture think of the
great churches including especially st.
Peters that he helps to design one
reason we find them so satisfying is
that they mimic those formal proportions
of the body now time as Aquinas referred
to art as rector rot co-factor Billiam
that means right reason in regard to the
making of things now what's the rector
Accio the right reason well it's a grasp
of the formal structures of things which
now go into the producing of artifacts
that's art now the arrival of modernity
we have a great questioning
of formal causality things are always
shifting and influx and we put a great
stress on efficient causality right
where things come from so what do you
find in modern art especially as it
moves toward the contemporary period you
see the great stress placed on the
intention of the artist the
externalization of the subjectivity of
the artist becomes the major value that
something is creative that its
expressive of the artist that's what
makes great art great the limit case of
this is the famous line from Marcel
Duchamp the 20th century a french
dadaist artist who said famously what
the artist spits is art in other words
the complete questioning of the form
formal structure of art and a hyper
stress on the efficient causality what
the artist produces I would suggest we
are now at the polar opposite of rector
OTT co-factor billion okay
that's the arts look now at ethics
morality classical morality both in the
ancients and the medieval is predicated
upon final causality in other words
what's the purpose of an act so think of
what I'm doing right now the speech act
I can look at it materially produced by
my tongue and air and teeth and so on
but what they were interested in was the
final causality Oh what's the purpose of
speech and they would say well
truth-telling
that's the purpose of a speech act is to
tell the truth therefore a good speech
act is one that produces the truth a
falling away from that lying deception
etc is therefore something morally
objectionable the determination of that
is predicated upon a knowledge of the
finality or purpose of the speech act or
another example an act of legislation
well what's the purpose of that but the
production of justice if it legislative
act is order toward justice it's a good
Act it was ordered toward something else
the good of the
or some private interest it's there for
something bad finality is key is a key
ingredient in the determination of moral
rectitude okay so what happens when
final causality is compromised but what
you get is I think what you find in a
lot of contemporary thinking about
ethics ethics is finally a matter of
what I determined to be right if no one
can really know what the final cause of
something is well then what finally
matters is is it expressive of my
desires expressive of my sense of
identity and that now becomes the
criterion of morality Thomas Aquinas
referred to ethics as rector rot co-ed
jbeil 'i'm art was rector at co-factor
Billiam right reason in regard to the
making of things ethics is right reason
rector ratio in regard to the doing of
things I'd you billion
what's the rector ratio is a clear grasp
of finality or purpose now if Marshall
marcel duchamp is the limit case of art
what the artist spits is art I'd say
people like Friedrich Nietzsche and
jean-paul Sartre are the limit case of
this modern sense of morality they say
something like what the powerful person
wills and accomplishes is good operating
beyond good and evil beyond what the
society proposes is right and wrong the
powerful person designs or jean-paul
Sartre existence precedes essence what I
want what I desire determines the kind
of person I will be with those figures
we're at the polar opposite of rector
ratio haja billion now I'm bringing all
this up because I think it provides the
background for understanding why the
Catholic Church speaking on morality is
so often hard to hear hard to take
seriously our basic stance is a modern
one it's been filtered down from these
high figures I've been mentioning but
through a whole series of teachers and
writers
Culture commentators and is now inform
the common attitude so what do you hear
people today say usually some version of
who are you to tell me what to do
I've got to be me i express my own
identity I determine the meaning of my
life all of that is Nietzsche and Sartre
having trickled down into the common of
perspective the Catholic Church is
operating out of this pre-modern and
again I mean that positively you see how
you say pre-modern today is almost
automatically oh that means bad it means
primitive no no here I think pre-modern
means really good we're operating out of
a very different thought system that
takes formality and finality with great
seriousness so we say look at an act
whether it's a speech act an act of
legislation or a sexual act we look
primarily at finality at purpose what's
the meaning the formal and final
structure of that act this is why it's
very hard to hear the Catholic teaching
today just a last comment there are many
things wrong I think with the modern
approach to these issues but I think the
fundamental problem is the modern
approach is boring I say it because it
locks the subject so much into himself
there's no kind of thrilling adventure
of discovering formal truth or
discovering finality and purpose all
that matters is my little world of my
desires my identity my sense of myself
finally ho-hum I think classical
morality classical art as well is a much
more thrilling much more adventurous
project
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