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Paradise and the Groundlessness of Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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The thought of paradise has exercised a particular hold upon the ethical imagination. Bringing us before those things that lie just outside of our reach, its language speaks to us of what has been there all along, before ever we appeared to take up our places in the world, and of what will still be there ever after we have gone from here. Paradise speaks to us of this enduring somewhere else than here, and so we are drawn to its lasting otherness, held in fascination by its suggestion that things might have been otherwise, and might still come to be so—if only. Ethics has been shaped within this ‘if only’, the cue for its opening lines taken from the lead of paradise that it is our truest beginning, and its action directed by a promise that all will end well. So the thought of paradise enables the self-understanding of ethics as an interim measure, fit for the time between times, living from out of a perfect beginning and facing towards the horizon at which the sun will rise again. Paradise thus discloses the world for ethics, illuminating the world as a place of change, and at the same time a place of failure and of loss, and so it gives an ever-available ground for ethics, sending it forth to do what work it can in the time given, and shaping the activity of ethics as the careful observance and restoration of what comes to be known there.
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- Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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2 Baum, L. Frank, The Wizard of Oz (London: Fontana, 1969)Google Scholar. Originally published in 1900, this story was made into one of the first colour films in 1939. At least, the land of Oz was shown in colour; Kansas, it must be said, remains in black and white!
3 Augustine, Saint, De Civitate Dei, Levine, Philip (tr.), Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, Book XIII xviii which is called ‘De terrenis corporibus, quae philosophi adfirmant in caelestibus esse non posse quia quod terrenum est naturali pondere revocetur ad terram.’‘On earthly bodies, which according to the philosophers, cannot exist in the heavenly region because anything earthly is drawn back to earth by its natural weight.’ p. 198–9.
4 De Civitate Dei, Book XII xxii, ‘Hominem vero, cuius naturam quodam modo mediam inter angelos bestiasque condebat ut, si Creatori suo tamquam vero domino subditus praeceptum eius pia oboedientia custodiret, in consortium transiret angelicum, sine morte media beatam inmortalitatem absque ullo termino consecutus, si autem Dominum Deum suum libera voluntate superbe atque inoboedienter usus offenderet, morti addictus bestialiter viveret, libidinis servus aeternoque post mortem supplicio destinatus …’ p. 110–1.
5 De Civitate Dei, Book XII ii, … he granted being to the objects that he created out of nothing…”… rebus, quas ex nihilo creavit, esse dedit…’ Loeb, p. 10–11.
6 De Civitate Dei, Book XIII, xxi: ‘Possunt haec etiam in ecclesia intellegi, ut ea melius accipiamus tamquam prophetica indicia praecedentia futurorum, paradisum scilicet ipsam ecclesiam” p. 218–9.
7 See esp. De Civitate Dei, Book XIII xxi: ‘De paradiso, in quo primi homines fuerunt, quod recte per significationem eius spiritale aliquid intellegatur, salve veritate narrationis historicae de corporali loco.’‘That some spiritual symbolism may well be found in the account of paradise, the abode of the first human beings, without detracting from the veracity of the historical narrative of its existence in the material world.’ pp. 216–7.
8 René Descartes, ‘The Foundations of Metaphysics’, Discourse on the Method, bilingual edition, George Heffernan (ed./transl), see esp. Parts IV and V. ‘For, first, even that which I have already taken for a rule, namely, that the things that we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, is assured only for the reasons that God is or exists, that he is a perfect being, and that all that which is in us comes from him.’‘ Car, premièrement, cela même que j'ai tantôt pris pour une règle, à savoir que les choses que nous concevons très clairement et très distinctement sont toutes vraies, n'est assuré” qu’à cause que Dieu est ou existe, et qu'il est un être parfait, et que tout ce qui est en nous vient de lui.’ pp. 56–9. Amos Funkenstein says of this, ‘Descartes's rational account of the formation of the world was an archetype of knowledge‐through‐construction.’Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the 17th century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 325.
9 Descartes, Discourse, “… droit chemin de la vertu…”, p. 82–3.
10 See esp. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XIII, xxiv.
11 ‘Original Unity of Man and Woman: Catechesis on the Book of Genesis’ in The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston, MA: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), p. 51.
12 ‘Original Unity’, p. 25.
13 ‘Original Unity’, p. 87.
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16 Human All Too Human, see pp. 14–22. ‘Grundfragen der Metaphysik.— Wenn einmal die Entstehungsgeschichte des Denkens geschrieben its, so wird auch der folgende Satz eines ausgezeichneten Logikers von einem neuen Lichte erhellt dastehen: “Das ursprüngliche ailgemeine Gesetz des erkennenden Subjekts besteht in der inneren Notwendigkeit, jeden Gegenstand an sich, in seinem eigenen Wesen also einen mit sich selbst identischen, also selbstexistierenden und im Grunde stets gleichbleibenden und unwandelbaren, kurz als eine Substanz zu erkennen.“p. 31.
17 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XIV x,’ in illo memorabili beatitudinis loco, id est paradiso in tantorum tanta afluentia bonorum ubi nec mors metuebatur nec ulla corporis mala valetudo, nee aberat quicquam quod bona voluntas adipisceretur nee inerat quod carnem animumve hominis feliciter viventis offenderet.’ pp. 320–1.
18 Augustine here refers to Job 26.
19 De Civitate Dei, Book XIV xi,’ bene condita natura’, p. 322–3.
20 ‘… de nihilo factam …’, p. 326–7.
21 De Civitate Dei, Book XIV xiii, ‘Nee sic defecit homo ut omnino nihil esset, sed ut inclinatus ad se ipsum minus esset quam erat cum ei qui summe est inhaerebat.’ pp. 336–9.
22 ‘… nihilo propinquare.’ pp. 338–9.
23 De Civitate Dei, Book XIX i, ‘ Finem boni ergo nunc dicimus, non quo consumatur ut non sit, sed quo perficiatur ut plenum sit…’, pp. 96–9.
24 Book XIX iv, ‘Quid ilia virtus, quae prudentia dicitur, nonne tota vigilantia sua bona discernit a malis, ut in illis appetendis istisque vitandis nuilas error obrepat, ac per hoc et ipsa nos in malis vel mala in nobis esse testatur?’, pp. 128–9.
25 See the numerous uses of this phrase in Book XIX xiii, “ ordinate temperatura partium …”, pp. 174–5; xiv, ‘… ordinata cognitionis actionisque consensio…’, pp. 182–3; ‘… ordinata concordia…’, pp. 184–5.
26 Book XIX xvii, ‘Hanc pacem, dum peregrinatur in fide, habet atque ex hac fide iuste vivit, cum ad illam pacem adipiscendam refert quidquid bonarum actionum gerit erga Deum et proximum …’, pp. 198–9.
27 Book XIX xxiii, pp. 228–9.
28 See e.g. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Thing’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, Albert Hofstadter (ed./tr.), (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); first published as ‘Das Ding’ in Vorträge und Aufsätze 1936‐53 Teil II (Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, 1954).
29 The preoccupation with this double question, he understands to lie at the root of western thought, and is given the name ‘onto‐theology’. See Heidegger, Martin, ‘Kant's Thesis about Being’, Klein, Ted E. Jr. & Pohl, Wm. E. (tr.), in Pathmarks, McNeill, Wm. (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 340CrossRefGoogle Scholar. First published as ‘Kants These uber das Sein’, in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967): ‘Die Frage: “Was ist das Seiende?” fragt zugleich: Welches ist und wie ist das Seiende im Sinne des höchsten Seienden?’, p. 277.
30 These comments come in his reflection on the significance for political economy of the myth of Robinson Crusoe. Baudrillard, Jean, ‘For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign’, Levin, Chas. (tr.), in Selected Writings, Poster, Mark (ed.), (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988), p. 74–5Google Scholar.
31 In a speech in Leeds to the National Conference of Priests, 5 September 2001.
32 Luke2343.
33 Friedrich Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, Francis Golffing (tr), (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1956); first published as Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Sireilschrift in 1887. ‘Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst: das hat seinen guten Grund.’ (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1988), p. 3.
34 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q. 102, Article 1, ‘Ad tertium dicendum quod locus ille seclusus est a nostra habitatione aliquibus impedimentis vel montium, vel marium, vel alicuius aestuosae regionis, quae pertransiri non potest.’
35 ‘Ad quartum dicendum quod lignum vitae est quaedam materialis arbor, sic dicta quia eius fructus habebat virtutem conservandi vitam … Similiter etiam lignum scientiae boni et mali materialis arbor fuit, sic nominata propter eventum futurum …’
36 Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Q. 17, Article 8, ‘Utrum caritas sit prior spe … Sed secundum ordinem perfectionis caritas naturaliter prior est. Et ideo, adveniente caritate, spes perfectior redditur…’
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