[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he following is adapted from Fr. Charles’ writing in the Trinidad Guardian of November 12, 2007. At that time, I, Peter Josie, religiously read Fr. Charles’ pieces. For my part, its contents are as valid today as when first published.
An old dictum in philosophy has it that you are either born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. Simply put, it means that you’re born either with your feet on the ground or your head in the clouds. My sympathy is with Aristotle. He came towards his mature outlook approaching the end of his life, after gazing into the abyss revealed by Greek tragedy and long reflection on the idiosyncrasies that characterize human behaviour.
The vision of goodness he finally endorsed was not some abstract ideal secured in a world of flux, but something at once more concrete and supple. The criterion for acting well, he said, is the example of concrete human beings, people one can even name. Just as the subject matter of ethics is concrete human action, so the criterion for distinguishing between acting well and acting poorly is the example of specifiable human beings.
Such models are chosen not that we may imitate the content of what they do, but that we may grasp or intuit their way of being. Every person is unique. It is impossible for us to try to be like anyone else or do what they do. We imitate in the sense of facing situations in our lives in the way certain people we admire faced them in theirs.
Imitation is otherwise futile. What we need is imagination plus incorporation. Thus, we move imaginatively from the details of a life to its enabling structure, from the deeds we observe to the character behind them, thence to a cultivated stance of our own.
This is true of any model we choose, whether it’s that of a beloved parent or teacher, an icon like Mandela or a historical figure like Jesus.
The structure we bring to this task has two sources, one more within our control than the other. Outside our control, at least initially, is how we have been shaped by our culture and environment to perceive and feel in certain ways. The other source is our own responsibility. It has to do with the choices we make and the values we decide to incorporate in our actions.
The programme still remains in an important sense incomplete. The component that completes it is discernment. Grasping how Mandela acted does not tell us immediately how we ought to act here and now. “That decision,” Aristotle says, “lies with discernment.” It’s not a simple quality, not just having some sense of what to do, but when to do it, how to do it in the best way and, most difficult of all, how to do it for the best reasons.
To begin with, we have to think ourselves away from the world of ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’. Discernment has more to do with the world of art and athletics. It’s a matter of acting or choosing in a way an archer aims at and hits the mark, or the way an artist undertakes and completes a work. A matter of getting it right, of doing the fitting thing.
Much as one would like to teach it, Aristotle observed, discernment cannot be taught. A father cannot pass it on to his child; a teacher cannot pound it into her students. Sons, daughters and students must develop it on their own. It is the root of their freedom and their identity.
What one can do is help establish the conditions that make discernment more probable and more frequent. It’s the most that anyone can do. People can be led to freedom, but they must claim it themselves.
Discernment is taught, if at all, by a sort of indirection. It’s how St. Paul clarifies the meaning of love in First Corinthians: ‘Not this, not that, not that; this . . . and that,’ – and so on. Similarly, a teacher will instruct a student: ‘The truth is not x, not y, not z; look over there; not a, either, not b, but take a look at d.” The student who will be discerning catches on.
Discernment involves the whole personality. How a person is, is how things will appear to him or her. Someone determined to be optimistic will refuse to see tragedy. Only the genuinely authentic and free person will see well or see truly.
How do we become better at discernment? How do we improve and sharpen the ways we perceive?
This is where, for Aristotle, politics comes in. Not politics in the sense of party politics, but politics in the sense of the overall quality of a society’s life. The values, beliefs, and practices of a society shape the experience, feelings, and perceptions of people within it. The quality of individual life is significantly related to the quality of the social environment.
One hopes, of course, but the point implied is that social mores make indispensable contributions to individual character. I can choose to live a life as free as possible from prejudice but it helps if I live in a society that encourages my choice. A more tolerant society has its own contribution to make to generating less cantankerous, partisan and racist individuals.
Author’s note: I pray that this message will be delivered pure and unsullied on
Saint Lucia’s 50th anniversary of independence as I have delivered it to her sons and daughters on her 39th. God bless!
