Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Stichwort: Wert, Person: authentische, Wert schaffend, selbsttranszendent; Freiheit; Zielwerte, dreifache Struktur des Guten -> Stufen der Gemeinschaft

Kurzinhalt: When a person is not motivated in a calculus of pleasure and pain but by values ... then "the self... is achieving moral self-transcendence[,] ... is existing authentically[,] ... is constituting himself as an originative value

Textausschnitt: 20b Whenever human beings deliberate, evaluate, decide, and act, for Lonergan they emerge as existential subjects whose very person is at stake.1 Whenever people as individuals are self-transcendent enough in their deliberating, evaluating, deciding, and acting, they realize personal values. As mentioned above, they are originators of values in themselves and in their milieus, and they inspire and invite others to be originators too.2 As originating values, persons are authentic, choosing self-transcendence by their good choices.3 Then, to be persons means to be "principles of benevolence and beneficence, capable of genuine collaboration and of true love."4 Particular goods are whatever satisfy needs and fulfill capacities. Goods of order are the institutions, and "all the skill and know-how, all the industry and resourcefulness, all the ambition and fellow-feeling of a whole people, adapting to each change of circumstance, meeting each new emergency, struggling against any tendency to disorder."5 Terminal values as the comprehensive objective correlative of persons as originating values are the values that people actually choose: "true instances of the particular good, a true good of order, a true scale of preferences regarding values and satisfactions."6

21a It is clear that for Lonergan, maturity entails a real apprehension, judgment, and decision regarding personal values and an appreciation of liberty as an active thrust of the self towards self-determination. When a person is not motivated in a calculus of pleasure and pain but by values, he or she is free and "regularly opts, not for the merely apparent good, but for the truly good"; then "the self... is achieving moral self-transcendence[,] ... is existing authentically[,] ... is constituting himself as an originative value, and is bringing about terminal values, namely a good of order that is truly good and instances of the particular good that are truly good."7 Then, too, personal values govern cultural, social, and vital values. Because when we exist as persons, we "meet one another in a common concern for values, (and) seek to abolish the organization of human living on the basis of competing egoisms and to replace it by an organization on the basis of man's perceptiveness and intelligence, his reasonableness, and his responsible exercise of freedom." (Fs) (notabene)

21b The orientation of people is shown in the personal relations implicit in their cooperating for particular goods, and in playing roles and fulfilling tasks in the different institutional contexts of the familial, educational, technological, economic, legal, political, artistic, and religious orders of society. People carry on recreational and pragmatic communication in these relationships. But orientation is most central when personal relationships are of focal concern in friendships that go beyond motives of mutual utility or pleasure, and simply exist for their own sake. Communication on this level is constitutive in the sense that it is the kind of communication in which people's personal identity and orientation are at stake.1 For Lonergan freedom is a matter not of indeterminacy but of self-determination, and what most determines a person's free self-constitution are the commitments they undertake and "the expectations aroused in others by the commitments."2 These commitments and the expectations that go with them regard not just performance, competence, or skill but "qualitative values and scales of preference." Each person's qualitative values and scales of preference are determined most crucially by their free commitments.

22a The three-tiered structure of the human good, comprised by particular goods, goods of order, and terminal values, corresponds to diverse levels of community.3 Particular goods correspond to the intersubjective community that integrates people as subjects of experience and desire, with their spontaneous tendencies and elemental feelings of belonging together. Goods of order arise from the developments of human intelligence that enable people to "grasp and formulate technological devices, economic arrangements, political structures," and they correspond to the civil community, "a complex product embracing and harmonizing material techniques, economic arrangements, and political structures."4 Terminal values arise from personal judgments of value and they correspond to the cultural community, which is "the field of communication and influence of artists, scientists, and philosophers[,] ...the bar of enlightened public opinion to which naked power can be driven to submit [,]...the tribunal of history that may expose successful charlatans and may restore to honor the prophets stoned by their contemporaries."5