Towards a substantive knowledge that promotes the dignity of the human being

Abstract

Today's Western individual can be described as a satisfied citizen. But while it is clear that the lives of the inhabitants of the First World are filled with a sense of satisfaction, the question immediately arises as to what this sensation is based on, if it is more than a merely skin-deep satisfaction. With reference to the recent past, human (cultural) progress tends to be quantified in three broad areas: science, morality and art, all preferably seen through a rationalist prism. Unamuno underscored the difficulty of approaching culture in these terms, with the understanding that this neglected aspects intimately linked with the life processes of ‘flesh and blood’ individuals, processes that made it possible to achieve a sense of life that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Regarding this failure to take such life processes into account, and given its propensity for generalization, science stood out among these spheres as placing an excessive weight on positivist values that by their very nature disregarded anything that could not be classified as such. This approach was in stark contrast with the open tradition upheld by Miguel de Unamuno that would be eagerly taken up by Spanish philosophy in the twentieth century. From the perspective of that philosophy it is, therefore, worth asking whether all of those aspects and elements (not only those that form part of any given human life but also those belonging to the other two main spheres of culture – art and morality – displaced by scientism because they were not positive or verifiable through experiment, because they did not lend themselves to being understood using a rationalist or logical/scientific reasoning) were not also human. Was their rejection justified?

Resumen

Al individuo occidental de nuestros días se le puede describir como un ciudadano satisfecho. Pero si bien se puede apreciar que a las vidas de los habitantes del primer mundo les acompaña ese sentimiento de satisfacción, la cuestión que brota de modo inmediato es sobre qué descansa dicho sentimiento, no sea que se trate de una satisfacción meramente epidérmica. Amparados en un pasado reciente, se tiende a cifrar el progreso (cultural) humano en torno a tres grandes ámbitos, a sabre: la ciencia, la moral y el arte, pero iluminados preferentemente por un enfoque racionalista. Ya puso de manifiesto Unamuno la dificultad de asumir la cultura en esos términos, por entender que dejaba desatendidos aspectos íntimamente ligados a los procesos vitales de los individuos de ‘carne y hueso’ desde los cuales poder alcanzar un sentido vital que permanecería inaccesible sin su consideración.

Desde la no consideración de estos procesos vitales, y por su facilidad para la generalización, destacó entre esos ámbitos el científico, ponderando excesivamente unos valores positivistas que por su propia índole desestimaban todo aquello que no podía ser catalogado como tal; un enfoque que chocó frontalmente con la tradición abierta por Miguel de Unamuno y que recogerá felizmente la filosofía española del siglo XX. Con ella y desde ella cabría preguntarse —pues— si todos aquellos aspectos o elementos, no únicamente los que forman parte de una vida humana concreta sino también los pertenecientes a los otros dos grandes ámbitos de la cultura (el arte y la moral) y que el cientificismo había desplazado, por el hecho de no ser positivos o verificables experimentalmente, por el hecho de no dejarse apresar por una razón racionalista o lógico-científica, dejaban de ser humanos. ¿Está justificado tal abandono?

From a perspective of pre-postmodernity

Max Weber provided us with an original way of thinking about society, looking at it not so much ‘from above’ as ‘from below’; in other words, from the reality of society itself, focusing on its specific manifestations and characteristics, on the analysis of the motives behind different situations. Indeed, Weberian social theory is not limited only to the general; rather, it aims to identify the specific causes that at any particular time give rise to one kind of cultural phenomena as opposed to another. For Weber, there is a type of social causation that is essentially different to physical causation in that it cannot be expressed in a body of general, necessary knowledge; this does not stop it from being strictly causation, however, albeit of another kind more to do with understanding than with explanation.

Nevertheless, Weber cannot be positioned as far from this scientism as it might seem, given that in order to access understanding as a way of knowing the causes of social (personal) phenomena he called on the rational dimension of these phenomena, provided quasi-exclusively by methodological reasoning,¹ since knowledge of social phenomena, an understanding of their causes and subsequent events, was more plausible and reliable when it was rooted in this rational dimension. It is at the core of the rational aspects of life that we can discuss social phenomena as accurately as we can physical phenomena, since both motives and actions correspond to rational – and, therefore, communicable – causes.

This consideration is very important due to its implications. As Habermas states, the process of rationalization ‘means, first of all, the extension of the areas of society subject to the criteria of rational decision’.² A rational understanding of society means solely assessing the strictly rational motivation for social actions, disregarding all others. Weber is aware that the social sphere is broader than the rational sphere,³ but that does not stop him from classifying actions motivated by these other human factors (emotions, habits, prejudices, impositions, and so on) as ‘deviations’ from rational action. These deviations include everyday actions (the most common type of action) that are carried out without a defined rational motivation; rather, they constitute a ‘reaction to stimulus’.

The act of giving precedence to the rational led to a need for any social act to include a rational element in order to be considered such. Thus, all social actions (as opposed to everyday or reactive acts) had to have a rational nature making it possible to identify a purpose to the action in question. In order to be considered rational, a social action had to be aimed at achieving an outcome, and critically opposed to what can be considered reactive or traditional. And while at the heart of a rational action there was the possibility of situating the purpose in the action itself, this purpose was more commonly positioned outside of the action, in the instrumental reason.

Weber was aware of the impossibility of a ‘pure’ exercise of reason; nevertheless, he considered the weight of rationality to be instrumental in the social exercise of reason. In this respect, social dynamics gave ever-increasing importance to measurable, controllable and predictable (?) phenomena, offering an internal structure against which the political, social and economic elements had to be adjusted. This also required that everything that could not be rationalized (that is, everything vital or existential) be cast aside. Thus, a gap opened up between instrumental and vital values, a fracture that easily led to the futility of the latter as science and technology progressed.

As a consequence, early twentieth-century Europe was dominated by a strongly positivist and instrumental current whose very nature was conducive to a society that favoured competitiveness and strategic negotiation, and hindered the existence of trusted spheres fostering the development of healthy and rounded personalities on a broad spectrum. How can trusted environments be generated when aggressiveness and hostility prevail? This symbolic universe with a markedly spiritual and ethical nature was replaced with another ‘whose structure is instrumental and strategic rationality’.⁴ This has led to a rift between the public and private aspects of our lives, each of which is dominated by different values, generating a deconstruction of the individual who, if they are to survive, has no choice but to protect themselves through the creation of walls or through escapism that prevent the establishment of constructive, enriching relationships. We live behind masks that social competitiveness and aggression oblige us to wear and that we are incapable of taking off. Meanwhile, a society that considers itself democratic should be working towards the precise opposite ends: to help us to reveal our most authentic humanity, our deepest and most personal being from where we can confidently come into contact with all others, with propitious outcomes and a view to achieving a truly democratic society in which people can simply be just that – people. Should this not be the purpose of democracy? As María Zambrano reminds us, ‘if one had to define democracy, one might do so by saying that it is the society in which being a person is not only permitted but required’.⁵

In postmodernity

Pragmatism and consensus are characteristic of our society, then, in light of which any substantial ethical consideration is easily classified as dogmatic – and certainly useless in comparison to the globally accepted values of utility and power. Nevertheless, the alienating nature of utility and power are good examples of values that are not as human as one might think. If they were human values, they would not lend themselves to being rapidly assimilated into the ideologies of the powerful (and of the not-so-powerful aspiring to power), as is happening currently in Western societies. Far from serving to liberate and enrich, they alienate and destroy meaningful ties.

The Western world has been guided by a march towards technological and technocratic progress in the broadest sense. This has culminated in a sense of self-sufficiency which takes on the future with the security granted by progress and has but one purpose: to achieve a kind of earthly paradise free from suffering, pain and death, shored up by material well-being and bathed in minimum ethical considerations which, together with an emotive sentimentality, prevent a fall into barbarism while eschewing an authentic commitment to and responsibility for its surroundings. Faced with this situation, it is worth asking who the post-modern individual will be. If the various social spheres are mere plates of ice floating on a shapeless sea, free from any kind of metaphysical roots, what kind of human being will live on them? What will they be anchored in? What will provide the foundations of their life? Or will their survival be dependent, perhaps, on the dynamics imposed by the environment, the result of an unbridled technocratic and instrumental social momentum?

Habermas asks whether this picture sketched by scientific and technological process is as sterile as it might appear in principle: ‘must not the rationality of science and technology, instead of being reducible to unvarying rules of logic and method have absorbed a substantive, historically derived, and therefore transitory a priori structure?’⁶ As Habermas says, what will become of the human race if in the end it falls into the clutches of the technocratic dynamics, forgetting its own personal dynamic? Even more so if we consider that this ‘unfreedom’ caused by technological dependence does not seem to be so: ‘this unfreedom appears neither as irrational nor as political, but rather as submission to the technical apparatus which enlarges the comforts of life and increases the productivity of labour’.⁷

One cannot deny that the German philosopher is right about this issue; but from my point of view, it is another matter to be able to follow him as he carries this argument through to his resolution. Faced with strategic or instrumental reasoning, Habermas proposes communicative reason, projected on an ideal society capable of maintaining its vital ties by means of communicative links established in the public spaces of intersubjectivity. This communicative action is rational, not only because the emitter and receptor share the same language but also since this language enables the speaker to offer arguments and reasons that the listener may or may not accept. Besides the assumption that this communication is highly effective, the concept is based on a shared aim of communication and dialogue between speaker and listener. However, on the assumption that this process of dialogue takes place, it is worth considering whether this mutual desire for a shared communicative rationality is a sufficient basis for an interpersonal connection. Is something more not needed than the capacity for the critical dialogue in order to forge valid intersubjective links? What are these links based on? Would this intersubjective validity not have to be based on more radical pre-existing anthropological categories?

Habermas situates these foundations in the capacity for dialogue itself, through which the consensus reached indicates the direction to be taken. Despite the fact that this process is not considered from an instrumental point of view, and although the important role of dialogical reasoning must not be underestimated, Habermasian thought involves a certain socialization of intersubjectivity, in the sense that individual autonomy and originality are subsumed in the discursive process that gives rise to it and cannot escape it, since Habermas does not fully assess the weight and influence that the social aspect may have on the personal development of the communicative act itself.

Moreover, might not reducing the future of humans to the dialogical, the rational, be rather predictable? And the question that immediately arises is the following: is everything in human life is predictable? Should the course of human life follow only the path signalled by a consensus reached through communicative reason? Are there no moments of uncertainty or mystery, inevitable during the course of a person's life and, therefore, in society as a whole? If all human beings have to be suited to successfully engaging in communicative links, does that not mean that acquiring these communicative capacities involves an attempt to homogenize the particular characteristics of any one individual, precisely in order to turn them into a citizen able to exercise this type of reasoning?

Faced with a deficient communicative reasoning, the need arises to bring other types of considerations into its practical exercise, making use of all that which is so difficult to understand in rational terms, such as life and its metaphysical configuration, whether in more linguistic terms as in Apel, more ethical terms such as those proposed by Lévinas, or by reassessing a true sense of responsibility as set out by Jonas. Ultimately, the aim is to go beyond the merely formerly linguistic, something that Gadamer also calls for when he contends that rational argument remains on a strictly formal plane unless it can be seen to have a solid grounding in reality. Logical validity is not enough for discourse: a genuine reference to reality is required, something which in Gadamer – unlike Hegel – remains open-ended, ambiguous.

More than a few authors have highlighted these human features – vital features – in contrast to those that are merely rationalist. And they have highlighted them with the understanding not only that human life takes place in the everyday, but also because the core of a person is grounded in these human features. Not everything is abstract or conceptual. While one cannot deny the weight and importance of all of this (and it does undoubtedly have importance), neither can we overlook other elements that are becoming ever more relevant today and are crying out for a rigorous philosophical examination. Where can we position a sense of solidarity with the less fortunate? Compassion for someone who is suffering? Indignation when faced with injustice? Surely questions such as these also form part of people's every day and, by extension, of society as a whole? Can they be reduced to logical-scientific calculations in practical reasoning?

We might think that among proponents of the ‘welfare society’ there is an honest motivation that helps them understand what can best be offered to a human being. But if we consider all of those ‘other’ elements discussed here, we might question whether the welfare society truly offers human beings a real possibility of achieving a dignified and fulfilled life. Is it enough to enjoy a certain status of well-being? Is well-being the new eschatological realm to which one must aspire? Can it be said that once the desired state of well-being is achieved (if, indeed, such a thing were possible), all of our needs will be fulfilled and all of our fears overcome? While a certain level of well-being is reasonable – and even necessary in that we all require a minimum of material goods in order to live a dignified existence – this minimum is very far from covering all human needs and aspirations. Perhaps the model of humankind based on the welfare society is a limited model that fails to take account of all of that which is probably most valuable in human terms.

Mapping everything that is most humanly valuable in philosophical terms is a delicate task – even more so if we take into account contemporary thinkers’ reluctance to consider any kind of metaphysical principle. They believe that using this idea of ‘what should be’ – which in reality is no less than the deepest and most intimate essence of the human being – as a compass has constituted and still constitutes an uncomfortable matter for reflection, even to the point of choosing to ignore it. What alternative is there? Well, there is the well-known tactic of resorting to a faith in reason left to its own devices, accompanied by a scientific progress whose parameters are limited to material well-being. And so, any alternative proposal is an enemy to be battled and overcome as something belonging to an outdated romanticism only good for invoking in ideological discussion.

We are immediately reminded of Derrida's deconstructionist thinking, which, faced with the difficulties of delving into the Heideggerian concept of being, put itself forward as an innovative alternative movement born of a rejection of the ‘manifest’ impossibility of achieving a solid grasp of reality and of the human being, putting all its hopes on an unsatisfactory acceptance of ‘what there is’: if the idea of seeking solid fundaments is such folly, why should one continue with the enterprise? Deconstruction relates to the victory of what floats on the surface, of the superficial, the state that Bauman fittingly classified as ‘liquid’ when describing this ‘change in the way we understand relationships, ties, duties and values, and even in the way we approach personal identity’.⁸ We might also discuss the idea of weak thought proposed by Vattimo, in which the being disintegrates when faced with our manifest incapacity to access a truth that continues to be valid throughout our historicity. Thus, human salvation lies in a loving charity that is experienced horizontally, devoid of any vestige of verticality.

These vain attempts to ground this ‘new’ anthropology have inexorably spiralled into desperation and nihilism dressed up as well-being, effectiveness and profitability, prestige, and the dizzying exhilaration of the immediate. Today's society seems to be made up of a superficial way of life cushioned in the ideal of progress, a neurosis that flees from its own self, free from any radical reference (or an ‘I’, a ‘you’, a concept of reality) that it might cling to. This is what Taylor calls the loss of identity, the true drama of modern humankind, since it is thanks to identity that ‘I know what is truly important to me and what is less important; I know what concerns me deeply and what has a lesser meaning’.⁹ This identity should not be understood as a jail in which individuals feel prisoner but as a mediator for full development.¹⁰ The Canadian philosopher goes on to say that the most terrifying thing about the current situation is that ‘these references are lost; one no longer knows what is really important, situated on the edge of an abyss in which absolutely nothing is strictly important’.

It is difficult to construct something without taking into account the foundations on which this work will be supported; in Taylor's opinion, this is ultimately what happens in this current deconstruction.¹¹ Here there is a certain incoherence, given that, even from the basic perspective of human authenticity, these thinkers generate a thinking that neglects the basic principles on which it is constructed, ignoring its ‘essential constituents’. Can a life be authentically lived when our backs are turned to the fundament of life, to reality, to the reality of what we are? ‘Can reality be deconstructed’?¹² The attempt to respond in the affirmative to these questions and the shape of postmodern life are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Are there motives to continue trusting optimistically in the instrumental, technocratic society, the welfare society, the deconstructionist, weak, liquid society? Is it legitimate to content ourselves with a selfish and solipsistic life, achieved on the basis of global inequalities, placing pressure on so very many human beings that are struggling to survive?

Towards post-postmodernity

More than to merely survive, the human being is required to live, to realize in their history a fulfilled life, constructing intimate and meaningful relationships. The citizen of the West has to stay alert in order to avoid sliding down the gradual slope of indifference and instrumentalism, of the atomism and social fragmentation which are favoured by the bureaucratization of states and competitiveness in the markets. It is, then, necessary for us to reflect on the anthropological categories that facilitate a social existence through commitment and action with a view to a person's self-fulfilment in its most radical form. A way of exercising reason is required that makes it possible to place a rigorous focus on the aspects intrinsically linked to the course and development of human life.

As part of this new humanity, it is worth examining the price of our ‘well-being’, for example – a problem that we can approach from two different standpoints. One approach lies within our society itself, highlighting the imbalance between the technical and instrumental, and the world of ethics. The other is external, and allows us to immediately identify the large-scale imbalances created by our indiscriminate quest for well-being. Not only is it not well-being (understood in its true form), but it is even something that generates great injustices on a global scale, precisely because it is not true well-being. Poverty – whose sphere should not be reduced solely to primary goods of survival (although it does include these) but should also be extended to all of that which hinders a human being in a reasonable development of their life – constitutes a limit to humans’ radical freedom due to a lack of options. For it is not so much about providing mere well-being as it is about providing a sphere in which all individuals can develop their full potential.

Is this radical change in the conscience of the Western human being possible? If we do not take into consideration all other aspects of reason and human life, any discipline that develops in our society – above all, in economics and politics – will become a search for consensus, a strategic negotiation with the sole instrumental aim of improving well-being, which has not even been capable of generating a sense of collective identity.¹³ Yet, is there nothing more? Yes: and this is precisely where the challenge lies: ‘at the current crossroads radical humanism has to find its way in opposition to “strategic individualism”’.¹⁴ The idea is to move away from a freedom put forward in terms of satisfaction and towards one expressed in terms of capacity building, enablement.¹⁵

Thanks to the fact that our lives are focused on achieving this ideal behaviour and existence, we are capable of offering the best of ourselves: to reject that would be to reject our very essence. As Ricoeur states, any discussion of what it is to be a human being involves considering both its infinite and finite nature, and if both poles are not taken into account then an adequate anthropology cannot be engaged in, given that on the one hand everything that is ‘surplus’ would be rejected (everything disproportionate, the French philosopher would say), while on the other due attention would not be paid to our bodily presence in this world.¹⁶ In this sense, the recovery of Western society necessarily involves the recovery of the human virtues that enable universal solidarity and a commitment to compassion. According to Ricoeur, this is possible because the otherness of the other can be established based on a pre-existing, underlying shared identity, a primordial unity from which it is possible to talk about ‘otherness’ in a way that facilitates communication, communion and compassion.

These ethical possibilities are rooted in our biology which, thanks to its hyperformalization (Zubiri) leaves us to be weather-beaten by the storm (Ricoeur), giving us a freedom of action that makes us ‘likely to be somewhat predisposed to the community and to altruism’.¹⁷ This connection between morality and biology, as described by MacIntyre, has not received due consideration through the history of philosophy, despite the fact that authors such as Saint Thomas himself had already highlighted the issue. Conversely, an emphasis has been placed on the purely practical aspect of our behaviour, without due attention to our physiological structures,¹⁸ and a lack of knowledge of these results – in his opinion – in a ‘penumbra’ surrounding the foundations of human ethical life. When shining a light on this area of penumbra, we can discover some ethical categories associated with our corporeality, such as vulnerability and the attendant dependence it generates, which offer very succulent possibilities, given that they allow us to discover that we can only obtain our personal well-being by contributing to the well-being of society.

Because the other is similar to me before they are different; the other is not a mere member of my society (an individual that lives there) but my neighbour (as I am theirs), a realization that occurs at the same time as a rejection of the passions with which we cling to the technocratic and instrumental sphere, not so much because that sphere is a bad thing in itself but because we do not experience it from the point of view of charity, considering that this Western gigantism puts an end to all of the problems of relationships and human lives.

Globalization – which is a fact – should not degenerate into ‘globalism’; that is to say, political and cultural relations between countries should not be left in the hands of the market and a liberal ideology,¹⁹ which places us before a challenge of universal magnitude in which it is necessary to recover the civic role of the citizen, which has currently been relaxed before state action. This happens in an environment in which citizens live in a context of axiological disorientation and desperation in the face of the success (?) of the instrumental realm, which leads to a radical absence of any intentions of engagement. But does this rejection not go against our most intimate humanity? Human life is a task, a project. It is ‘planning’: the human being is required to live their life as a task to be fulfilled as opposed to something already complete. Is thinking about the future not something inherent to human life?²⁰ But before its futurizing nature, modern humans find themselves paralyzed, incapable of moving beyond reductionist certainties not associated with solidarity.

According to Taylor,²¹ what we have been saying would correspond to the three forms of malaise that the Canadian philosopher identifies in Western societies: individualism, the prioritizing of instrumental reason and the soft despotism of our institutions, which are, in turn, closely linked to a loss of meaning and the dissolution of the moral horizon, the eclipse of ends and loss of freedom. A renewed axiological cultivation is required in a process of change and global development, respecting the cultural features of each population,²² beyond political and economic factors. This also has to do with institutions: ‘But the truth in these analyses is that it is not just a matter of changing the outlook of individuals, it is not just a battle of “hearts and minds,” important as this is. Change in this domain will have to be institutional as well [...]’.²³ In effect, Western democratic states should aspire to creating a spirit of cohesion as opposed to a mere accumulation of individual wills, which requires people to be committed and disposed to solidarity,²⁴ a human development that must inevitably take place in a public, international space and reach all nations of the world.

The current institutional relations have a markedly commercial nature, and will only respond to this new moral calling if they are framed within another kind of broader relationships of ‘uncalculated reciprocity’, given that, as has been seen in the past, they are not suitable for regulating transactions of those types of goods ‘that can only be mine insofar as they are also those of others’.²⁵ MacIntyre argues that there is a need for individual goods to have a contribution to social goods and vice versa, that social goods should also contribute to the obtaining of individual goods, not to dissolve one in favour of the other but with a view to their mutual reinforcement. If personal and social flourishing is to incorporate the recognition of such goods, then it will also be necessary to change the paradigms governing transactions, to seek their radical motivation beyond the line established by the dichotomy of selfishness/altruism: ‘if virtues allow the human being to become an independent practical reasoner, this is also because it allows them to participate in reciprocal relationships through which they can achieve their ends as a practical reasoner’.²⁶ That is, personal maturity can only be reached in an atmosphere of social responsibility and deliberation.

Yet, in the same way as institutional relations need to shift towards uncalculated reciprocity, it is worth asking whether this shift cannot (or should not) also be taken a little further: does this focus represent the limit that can be reached by an integrated development? Does everything human end in the axiological dimension? It is the task of philosophy and theology to think about and ground the compromise between the finite and infinite nature of the human being, as Ricoeur reminds us; between justice and the logic of equivalence, and ability; overabundance, charity and love, and so on, in order for this commitment to be established, fostered and protected. Faced with those false prophets that heralded the disappearance of religion, we can see that ‘neither have religions disappeared from public life nor has religion become invisible in the lives of citizens’.²⁷ Could the ethical focus also be applied to our spiritual dimension by means of an ‘ethics of development open to spirituality’? Perhaps the answer is yes if we consider – as Bergson and Gómez Caffarena do – that there is a that there is a defining moment in which moral will itself goes beyond what can be classified as strictly moral.²⁸

We find ourselves in a historic moment in which glaring inequalities make a very clear call on our sense of responsibility. If we understand – as Zubiri does – that human history ‘formally consists of a process of capacity building’,²⁹ in the process of making it possible for future generations on all four corners of the planet to develop to their fullest, we must critically question our material, economic, socio-political, cultural, axiological and spiritual ways of life with the aim of finding out whether with the current Western lifestyle we effectively allow a development ethics to exist in all its dimensions (both basic and ethical/spiritual) or whether – as I suggest in these lines – it is necessary to discover new paths towards what is institutionally most human.