The foundations of bioethics: an interdisciplinary adventure at the University of Navarra 50 years on
Author: Natalia López Moratalla.
Published: Original publication
Date of publication: 2026
1 The ethical problem of science
2. The plural condition of man
summary
In 1977, a group professors at the University of Navarra began teaching the subject of Biological Deontology, which would later become Bioethics. The contribution of Professor of Theology Antonio Ruiz Retegui, a physicist and priest, was essential to understanding and conveying the ethical foundations. I summarize his main contributions here: The ethical problem of science. The ethical nature of human freedom. The modern crisis of Philosophy the birth of scientism. The creationist foundation of ethics. knowledge . Human plurality.
In the academic year , the University of Navarra received from its Chancellor, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, the impetus to attend to and form the conscience of its students. programs of study Schools Science included a subject , subject which was not generally taught at universities. With this encouragement, a group professors from different disciplines embarked on the interdisciplinary adventure of beginning to teach the subject of Biological subject .
After several years of focusing on the topics developed by each of us, we compiled the texts. In 1987, we published them at the School Sciences in a graduate book entitled graduate Biológica (Biological Deontology), which soon sold out. For several years now, the various chapters have been available online at the University of Navarra.
As we approach the 50-year mark, I wanted to acknowledge and express my gratitude for that impetus, and highlight the contributions of one of the most enthusiastic pioneers—Antonio Ruiz Retegui, priest and physicist, professor of theology at the university—who helped us so much in establishing the foundations of ethics in relation to science.
To this end, in this article summarized two of his contributions in this regard: "Science and the Foundations of Ethics. I: The Dignity of the Person" (chap. 1, pp. 7-33) and "Science and the Foundations of Ethics. II: Human Plurality" (chap. 2, pp. 35-51).
I took position the subject position Biological subject , which shortly afterwards became Bioethics and continues to be taught.
Based on the foundations I learned from Prof. Ruiz Retegui, I have cultivated this subject , which has resulted in the publication of the book Bioética desde la corporalidad (López Moratalla 2021), as well as numerous public interventions.
May this serve as a testimony of gratitude for the encouragement and training .
1. The ethical problem of science
Biological science has achieved a popularity that is uncommon in the positive sciences. The popularity of biology is due not so much to discoveries in research as to the internship application internship certain techniques that have been applied to humans for a few decades now and the audacity with which they have been used to intervene in human life. This very fact makes the popularity of biology a problematic one: a popularity of ethics as a problematization of the activities of biologists.
It can be said that the explosion of research and publications on bioethics is a phenomenon of our time, which embraces and expresses one of the most distinctive characteristics of our era. In reality, this crisis of scientific reason as the shaper of the world has a kind of precursor in the history of researchers in atomic and nuclear quantum physics in the 1920s and 1930s, and especially after the explosion of a device over the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (Jungk 1956). It was then suddenly realized that these technologies not only failed to guarantee a secure humanization of the world, but also constituted a serious threat to human existence.
But the problem with biological manipulation of humans is not the use of a destructive weapon.
It is man's humanity, his birth, and even his identity staff are directly affected by new biological technologies.
The big question is whether the project human domination of the world has not become a domination of science over man himself.
1.1. The ethical nature of human freedom
Deep down, we once again encounter the ancient question that gave rise to philosophical reflection on ethics twenty-five centuries ago, born of an awareness of freedom and its transcendence. Man began to think about Philosophy when he became aware that the exercise of his free will did not simply mean a choice between external things. This is certainly the most immediate and obvious dimension of freedom. But it soon becomes clear that its scope is deeper and more decisive: by choosing this or that thing, this or that course of action, man is deciding about himself (Caffarra 1981, 120-125).
Man's ethical experience is closely linked to his experience of freedom and the extent of his freedom.
It is the person himself who, as a result of his choices, will be fulfilled or frustrated. For this reason, the awareness of freedom, with all its depth and scope, confronts man with the question of his responsibility. This experience confronts man with various ways of fulfilling himself, some of which are experienced as true fulfillment and others as frustration. He is not indifferent to them: it does not matter to him whether he is fulfilled or frustrated. Every man wants to be happy. The great question of ethics is precisely to determine what it is that we want and how it is achieved. The Greeks called this object – "what everyone wants deep down" – the Good, which was precisely defined as "what everyone wants."
1.2. The truth about man as a measure of his freedom
The ethical experience presents itself to us as a synthesis of freedom and necessity. Freedom, because our will is not physically determined toward any mode of action. Necessity, because the desire for happiness and fulfillment challenges us in an absolute and inevitable way. The necessity is not of subject , it is not a mere external reality, but rather the person themselves as such. Thus, when a person betrays a moral value, their moral conscience condemns them as a person. It is not a matter of disappointment following failure in a specific area; that is, the moral conscience does not say "you are a bad mathematician" or "a bad athlete," but rather "you are bad."
It is the basic human experience of the warning of human dignity.
Human freedom, if it is not trivial, needs a rule, a criterion, by virtue of which the exercise of freedom can be right or wrong. That criterion can only be the truth of man, which is what ultimately decides. If this reference letter is denied, freedom becomes irrelevant, because it does not decide on anything truly important. However, the picture we encounter when we try to study fundamental ethical issues in depth is rather bleak. In contrast to the almost universal acceptance of positive scientific achievements, we find that in the field of ethics it is difficult to have a discussion on a common basis that is firmly accepted by all. The decisive factor remains unknowable. If this statement is not true, what is the fallacy inherent in modern conceptions of ethics?
1.3. Objectivity of ethics
The first problem that must be addressed, and which ethical reflection has historically addressed, is the problem of the multiplicity, divergence, and even civil service examination of ethical guidelines; that is, the tremendous differences of opinion that exist in different societies about what is good or bad, what should be done or what should not be done. This argument is often used against claims of objectivity or universal validity of specific moral requirements. But this is a weak argument, since the doctrine that upholds the universal validity of ethical norms is not built on ignorance of the reality of this multiplicity, but is explicitly built on it (Strauss 1953, 170-177).
It was the opening up of ancient societies, with the warning of strong contrasts in the behavior of peoples, that raised the need to abandon the criterion of the ancestral – "what we have always lived" – as the criterion of righteousness, and to seek it in the nature of man and things. It was the Greeks who, upon noticing this divergence, did not limit themselves to condemning the behaviors of others but wanted to compare them with their own, to see which of these behaviors was more human, more worthy of man. In this way, they abandoned myths as an explanation and foundation for the behavior and ways of being of peoples and turned their gaze to the humanity of man and the reality of things and the world, in order to find the appropriate measure for human behavior.
This was the finding concept of nature, which marked the beginning of philosophy and the origin of the notion of natural law.
Human thought followed this course until, in the 17th century, a new way of thinking and approaching the decisive questions of human existence burst onto the scene.
1.4. The modern crisis of Philosophy the birth of scientism
The new approach, the modern idea of dominion over the world, arises from the combination of several factors, of which the two most important are, perhaps, the awareness of the failure of Philosophy as a means of attaining wisdom and the immense prestige acquired knowledge in the field of knowledge , both for its inherent rigor and accuracy and for its usefulness in truly knowledge world.
Awareness of this crisis led the leading exponents of the new way of thinking to conclude that the very object of that attempt was an illusion or, at least, that it was unknowable. That object was the reality of things in the world and of man, their proper meanings and purposes. The classics, and all human reflection up to modernity, had questioned the essence of things, what life is, or beauty, or good... These are the objects on which there seemed to be no agreement . Philosophy had Philosophy managed to become wisdom.
Skepticism regarding Philosophy is accompanied by the emergence of scientism, which does not concern itself with meanings or purposes whatsoever and has corroborated the Withdrawal position Withdrawal decisive issues.
Hobbes recognized that this intellectual attitude means making man a stranger in a world he cannot know, but that there is no need to worry: certainly man cannot know the world, that is, he cannot grasp the meanings of the things around him, but this is precisely what we need in order to dominate them. We can master the world because the world is unintelligible (Strauss 1953, 35–80). This is the quintessence of project modernity.
1.5. The modern idea of world domination
Obviously, saying that the world is unintelligible does not mean that we cannot know anything about the world: it only means that essences, meanings, and purposes are inaccessible to us. But we can attain another subject knowledge will give us absolute mastery. This is knowledge the regularities of behavior, knowledge the laws of regularity in facts.
knowledge, in this perspective, will be first and foremost knowledge of factuality. Meanings and purposes are a matter of human construction and decision.
It is a matter of knowing in order to foresee, and foreseeing in order to be able. This subject knowledge leaves knowledge room for ethical reflection, since science is essentially value-free, blind to values; it is, due to the restrictions it has imposed on itself, incapable of deciding between good and evil. Paying the price of ignoring natural meanings, it offers no natural meanings for human contemplation; it is pure facticity, and therefore significantly neutral, achieving an unprecedented mastery over nature.
It can be said that this sense of dominion is radically different from the premodern sense of man's lordship over the world, and therefore it would be a mistake to understand modern dominion as an adequate expression of the "subdue the earth" found in Genesis.
1.6. The recurrence of ethics
Although the new perspective has imposed itself on the human mindset, it has not been able to eliminate the ethical question. Logically, it cannot do so because ethical experience is a radical dimension of our own human experience. Scientists, as scientists, may ignore certain issues, but as individuals they constantly encounter them in their own lives. The fact is that it is these issues, and not scientific ones, that affect our lives. To the extent that rigorous reasoning has been restricted to the scientific realm, we find ourselves unprepared to deal in depth with what matters most to us.
1.7. “Facts” and “values”
The ethical question cannot be ignored, and scientific rationality itself has attempted to address it. The first attempt was to transform ethics into a "science of customs": as just another set of facts found in the world. The need to overcome the limitations of this approach led to the distinction between "judgments of fact" and "value judgments." The former would be susceptible to rigorous, i.e., scientific, justification. "Value judgments," on the other hand, would not be statements about objective reality, but about the effects that these objective facts have on people's sensibilities or emotions. It would be impossible to seek universal consensus on these judgments, as they would depend on training , tastes, etc. (Voegelin 1968).
When we say that murder or lying are wrong, we are expressing an objective reality, that is, a reality that is true because nature "speaks," not with human words, of course, but with meanings that can be grasped by an attentive mind.
1.8. Moral skepticism
This distinction gives rise to moral skepticism, which manifests itself in a Withdrawal rational discussion in the field of ethics. When natural meanings are denied, anyone who attempts to propose a form of behavior as universally valid will be branded a fanatic. The issue, then, is not to accumulate reasons of convenience or utility, but to regain the ability to look at reality as it is and recognize the human capacity to know it despite the temptation of skepticism. But when differences concern matters that affect man in his humanity, divergence or civil service examination be admitted without abdicating our human condition. In our time, attempts have been made to satisfy, in a certain way, the demand for universality, but without yet departing from the modern dogma of the denial of meanings proper to nature.
It has been called utilitarianism or, more recently, consequentialism or the ethics of responsibility. Its argument takes reference letter its reference letter the goodness or malice of actions based on the effects they have on the course of the world.
If at first scientism was able to revel in optimism about a future society built on science, today this is no longer possible. By failing to teach virtues, they have disappeared from people's hearts, and scientific technology has sample of shaping a strong and humane society.
A comprehensive foundation is required, starting from the very beginning of ethics. This foundation must explain the nature of the ethical dimension of humankind and the principles on which solutions to various specific problems are based. In this way, we will also have sufficient criteria to address strictly new problems that arise with humankind's growing dominion over the world and over humankind itself.
1.9. The creationist basis of ethics
The question of meaning cannot be answered with theoretical arguments. It points beyond what can be explained with words or speeches. We all know that a "crisis of meaning" cannot be resolved with words. Ultimately, the meaning of what we do and experience can only be based on something that has meaning in itself, something absolute, not dependent on anything else. This cannot be a human creation.
If it is said that it is man with his freedom who gives meaning to all his actions, it seems that man is exalted. In reality, he is radically depressed, because since all meaning is available therefore precarious.
Only the fact that there is a truth about man, which is both the foundation and stimulus for his life, can give it meaning.
The absolute questioning that man experiences in his ethical experience with regard to his own truth refers, in order to be intellectually balanced, to a foundation of an absolute nature. We could say that man experiences himself as an absolute in need of foundation, that is, as an "absolute-relative" based on an "absolute-absolute."
Creation can be viewed from various perspectives, but to understand it as simply the position of existence or the granting of being would be reductionist. If the Creator is not a universal principle but a staff Being, the act of creation will be intelligent and free. For this reason, creation can be considered both the fruit of creative Wisdom and creative Love.
As the fruit of creative Wisdom, creatures are suited to intelligence and are therefore intelligible and ontologically true.
They are intelligible because, in essence, they have been constituted by Intelligence. This is why it is said that God's Intelligence "measures" and is not "measured" by anything; creatures are "measured" by God's Wisdom and "measure" knowledge ; and this is "measured" by the truth of things.
Similarly, creatures have goodness, they are good because they have been caused by an act of the Creator Being, because they have been constituted by being loved by God.
In the divine act of creation, there is no separation between the granting of being, the bringing into existence, knowledge creative Love: they constitute a single act, distinguishable only from the partiality of our perspective; in reality, infinite Being is identical to Wisdom and Love. However, depending on which aspect of created things we are interested in studying, we can take guide of these aspects of the act of creation as guide .
To consider the goodness or intrinsic value of creatures, we must therefore consider creation from the perspective of creative Love.
1.10. Absolute value of the person
We have already shown that the human person is presented, especially in ethical experience, as a good in itself. This statement can be considered universally recognized evidence. However, the absolute value of the human person raises an intellectual question: how is it possible that the concrete human person, in his or her evident contingency, appears to me as an absolute value? The only possible answer lies, according to what we have said before about creative Love, in the fact that the human person, every human person, has been loved for his or her own sake in God's creative act.
It is not that we deduce the dignity of the person from creative Love.
The dignity of the person is sample to the attentive observer, particularly in the ethical experience that is an original experience.
But its rational explanation is, ultimately, that it has been loved for its own written request by God. We can affirm, in line with the entire Christian tradition, that man is the only creature in the world that God loves for its own sake (Caffarra 1981 52-53).
1.11. The fullness of man and his absolute value
The affirmation of the absolute value of the person must still be clarified. Indeed, each of us experiences ourselves as a good, but not yet definitive, rather as project. The ethical dimension that characterizes all human actions shows that life is a journey toward self-realization as a person. Conscience is precisely the light that guides and directs us on this journey, warning us which actions fulfill our dignity and which destroy it.
What God has loved for its own sake, and is therefore truly and properly a good in itself, is man in the fullness of happiness, whereas in his status he is still at risk of frustration. It follows, then, that the creative design achieves its effect with a status , as in two "moments": first, in which the subject is constituted as a free being destined for love; second, in which the same design reaches its fullness when man's freedom effectively chooses his truth and submission love.
The human person is therefore valuable absolutely, not so much for what he or she already is, but for what he or she is called to be.
Always bearing in mind that this calling is not something added to the already constituted man: it is what has given him his origin and placed him in the ontological and existential position in which he finds himself.
This correspondence of man may not take place when the person, with his freedom, refuses to respond to God's Love and to accept his "truth" about himself, closing himself off in order to carry out his own project of the creative design. Then the project for the person is cut short and man becomes frustrated: he remains "half-created," halfway between nothingness and life. This is precisely what conscience warns us when, in the face of moral evil, it condemns the person himself: you are evil. It is a matter of having fallen staff own being, of having stripped staff of one's own value by refusing to realize it fully.
With this, we have the ultimate keys to providing an adequate explanation of human life. If historical life has value, it is because of its intrinsic connection to the fulfillment to which it points, but in itself it has neither a raison d'être, nor intelligibility, nor a reason for goodness and value. It is certainly something, but it is more a "path toward being" than "definitive being"; it can still be frustrated. What is characteristic of the status is that it is not simply a reduced version of a fulfilled life; that is, it is not a different life, but the same life that is called to fulfillment, but still in progress.
1.12. Self-knowledge of man in ethical experience
Moral duty is thus the challenge that the fullness of man, that is, his own truth, poses to his freedom. For this reason, it can be said that, in the moral dimension of his actions, man achieves perfect self-knowledge, that is, a kind of alliance with creative Wisdom. In the experience of morality, with the demands it entails, the person perceives the appropriateness or inappropriateness of an action staff his own truth, and therefore the action appears in that experience as absolutely worthy or unworthy of being performed. Ethical rationality is not a form of instrumental rationality, it is not a form of rationality that establishes the means to achieve an end (Spaeman 1977).
What is explicitly known in moral action is precisely the act that is to be performed and its positive or negative interpellation, demanding its performance or prohibiting it, to human freedom.
This is why it is said that moral knowledge is knowledge , that is, knowledge accompanies and directs action, guiding the proper use of freedom (De Vicente 1980). It merely warns that right action is not measured by a rule , in the same way that the law of universal gravitation measures the attraction of masses. It is knowledge the way in which that action involves the fundamental moral value that is the human person. Moral experience, insofar as it is explicitly the experience of the interpellation of moral values, confronts us with our duty to treat things according to their own good, and the only good capable of absolutely interpellating freedom is the absolute good, that is, the human person.
1.13. Value of human existential dimensions
Those dimensions of human existence that do not in themselves constitute the person in his or her absolute dignity should not be treated as absolute goods. Health, beauty, physical or artistic conditions, and even physical life are certainly goods, and even specifically human goods, but they are not moral goods or values; they do not express in themselves the good proper to the human person, and therefore should not be considered absolute goods, objects of moral interpellation. They demand justice, that is, that they be treated not as available technical material available use, but as realities charged with their own, albeit relative, meaning.
The fundamental question that must be understood in action is how the action being taken or about to be taken involves the human person.
Ultimately, teaching the morality of actions is teaching this basic question. It is a sign of wisdom to embrace the finding the human dimensions involved in certain actions and experiences, and to incorporate them into one's own moral heritage (MacIntyre 1981). In this regard, it is especially important to note that some actions involve reality in staff own way. In these cases, we encounter acts that have their own moral qualification, that is, acts that in themselves challenge freedom with a properly moral challenge, that is, with a challenge that is an expression of the absolute value of the person. In summary, these are acts that entail an absolute demand on freedom.
Ultimately, teaching the morality of actions is teaching this fundamental question: these are actions that place an absolute demand on freedom.
1.14. Universality of moral precepts. The "exceptions"
The question that immediately arises is: do such acts actually exist, and are there acts that in themselves affect the human person as such? If so, what are these acts?
Certainly, we encounter traditional moral imperatives that express the requirement or prohibition of certain acts, but at the same time, it should be noted that we rarely find moral precepts that require or prohibit certain acts without exception.
The existence of exceptions is sample that the application of the relevant provision is not absolute, but dependent on other factors.
We are faced with an issue that requires careful consideration in order to get to the heart of the matter and avoid falling into the trap of facile ideological rhetoric.
The problem of exceptions to moral precepts can only be resolved by considering the true meaning of those precepts. We will not understand the meaning and requirement of the precept "thou shalt not kill" if we fail to understand the value staff expresses, and that moral value is not pure physical life, for physical life is not a moral value, although it is certainly closely linked to it.
What we would like to emphasize here is that, since moral precepts in their imperative propositional formulation are an expression of the requirement of moral value, it is almost impossible for the specific form that the precept takes to adequately or exhaustively express the corresponding moral value, at least in positive precepts (Frankl 1950).
The demand for moral values, insofar as they are demands of the absolute value of the person, cannot admit exceptions.
The first form that moral precepts take is the demand for virtues: "you must act justly," "you must be loyal," "you must be temperate." This form of demand is absolute because virtues are the expression of the whole value of the person in each of their operational adaptations, that is, they are the way in which the person is committed, as a person, to acting in each of their operational dimensions.
1.15. Universality of concrete moral laws
To see if a specific act involves the person, we must ask ourselves what the person does in that specific act. That question does not refer to the material event, which can be described morphologically, mechanically, or scientifically. The same material event can "do" very different things to the person. For example, the same material gesture of smiling can be approval or irony; a slap can be humiliation and staff can also be correction motivated by maternal affection; sexual donation can be staff donation staff selfish satisfaction of the desire for pleasure...
A mere material description of the act cannot provide information about the human significance from which grade derives its principle.
The only grade come from the meaning that the person performing the act gives to it. In many acts, there is an inherent meaning that precedes the meaning that the person performing the act wants to give it.
Examples of these acts are: a) staff communication staff language, b) staff communication staff sexuality, and c) staff communication staff physicality in general (MacIntyre 1982).
a) The condition of man as a being who can communicate with other people through speech entails the requirement not to lie, once the scope of staff communication has been established. In this sense, the precept "do not lie" is universally valid and admits no exceptions; once the sphere of staff communication has been established, staff expression staff words commits the person as such, and if they are lied to, they are being violated. This violation may be more or less serious, but it is always unlawful. Obviously, the condition we have pointed out, that a truly staff communication environment has been established, staff an status ; and when this is established, the use of words in communication is not subject to discretion: it already has a meaning that is in itself binding on freedom.
b) Similarly staff the communication staff in the sexual relationship has its own meaning that does not depend on the will of the person acting. In a strictly sexual relationship, what people do cannot be adequately expressed in mechanical, anatomical, or physiological terms. The sexual relationship is a peculiar form of giving, in which it is not simply cells that are given, but rather a peculiar form of staff giving: what is given is the person himself or herself. For this reason, the sexual relationship requires that staff giving staff linked to consent with the meaning proper to the sexual act: the staff meaning staff that act must be personally assumed. For this very reason, sexual relations can be subject to their own moral imperatives: for example, it can never be lawful, that is, it always implies a violation of the absolute dignity of the person, to have sexual relations with a person to whom one has not given oneself with the submission and realized in the sexual act, that is, with a person with whom one is not united in marriage; it expresses a moral requirement that has no exceptions.
c) People are also vulnerable due to their physicality. In this sense, respect for the person must be expressed in attention their physical condition, and it is never lawful to carry out acts that constitute an attack on the dignity staff their physicality. Again, here too it can be said that the description of the facts does not get to the heart of the matter: a slap or any other gesture may not be an attack on the person, but when they involve an aggressive affect on the person, they are always morally illicit. A person's physicality can be violated not only by strictly physical aggression, but also by mistreating their clothing or their private space. In this sense, although materially it is a matter of things, tearing off clothing or violently trampling on the home or the most personal belongings is also a violation of the person who lives in them, and therefore always morally wrong. This is the traditional meaning of "do not steal," and not merely the protection of commercial possessions: private property, traditionally, did not refer to wealth that was potentially marketable, but to the sphere of staff existence. That is why its defense was sanctioned by a moral precept, that is, by a requirement rooted in the absolute dignity of the person.
internship rationality that accompanies man in his actions depends on knowledge , that is, universal internship : about the moral quality of his actions.
For this reason, tradition taught that practical moral judgment—called "judgment of conscience" or simply "conscience"—is the proximate rule , that is, the reference letter that a person finds in order to act rightly.
But conscience must be true, that is, adequate to the truth about man, his absolute dignity, and the implication of this dignity in concrete actions.
When this implication is recognized, it becomes clear that it is possible to formulate moral precepts of universal validity. When, on the contrary, the implication of human dignity in actions is denied, the possibility of universal moral precepts is also denied, and the primacy of guidance in behavior is entrusted to reason internship status": ethics will decline into situationism, utilitarianism, or consequentialism, which, as we have seen, involve an arbitrary restriction of the view of the meaning of reality.
2. The plural condition of man
So far, we have discussed those properties, qualities, and laws that are found in all men; therefore, we have dealt with matters pertaining to essence, and thus we speak of man in the singular because, from that perspective, human essence is one. The pure essential study of man is insufficient because each person is the object of a creative act by God, and therefore cannot be considered a simple case of general laws, reduced to an individual of the human species.
Logically, the more abstract and universal man is considered to be, the less the individual person will be valued and the greater the risk of violations. In fact, experience shows that the most serious violations of staff dignity staff taken place in societies dominated by collectivist and universalizing ideologies. In this sense, scientism is one of the greatest risks.
Therefore, any consideration of humanity that seeks to do justice to the individual must take into account that human plurality has the dual character of equality and distinction. If humans were not equal, no anthropological science would be possible.
The irreducible distinction between individual and person is expressed in ordinary language in the distinction between "what is" and "who is."
The "who is" refers to the unique reality staff is a question that can only be answered by one's own name or similar.
2.1. Creation and generation at the origin of each person
The foundation of human plurality is the composition of creation and generation that takes place in the concrete origin of each person.
If explicitly created by God, the human person is a whole of meaning.
The easiest way to explain the composition between the creation of the soul and generation is to say that God creates the soul while parents beget the body. But that explanation is intellectually satisfactory only if one accepts the outline of man. That is, if one conceives of him as composed of two substances.
staff because it was easy to understand, it made its fortune in Western intellectual history, and its cadence was the progressive equating of the body with the machine and, in parallel, the denial of the spirit. But this dualism is incompatible with both our experience and the teaching of Christian anthropology. The affirmation of the unity of the person compels us to understand that creation and generation are composed in a more intimate way than that expressed according to the outline . Whatever the solution, its meaning is unequivocal: the proper term for creation is the person, and the same person is the term for generation. Parents participate in God's creative power. Obviously, science can account for the process of generation, but it cannot account for creation, nor, therefore, for the absolute dignity of the person.
2.2. Relationship between person and individual
The whole mystery of the human condition lies in the tension between these two poles: his condition as an individual and his condition staff. Man, belonging to the chain of generations, is not only an individual of the species, but is also included in the material processes transposed by the forces that move the subject. What Nietzsche called Dionysian has its occasion or its support in this dimension of ours. Extreme environmentalism, which advocates the total immersion of man in nature, also has the same point of support.
The creative call does not access a subject . Therefore, even if parents provide a subject was previously scattered, the person who is begotten is entirely created, that is, entirely in all their dimensions, as result a call, and therefore all human dimensions are intrinsically directed toward God.
2.3. The dual significance of the person: to God and to the world.
If staff existence is result a creative call from divine Love, the first thing that man has, in order of nature, is his openness to God. When St. Augustine wrote that "God is more intimate to me than myself," he was not making a pious metaphor, but pointing to something radically decisive in the anthropology derived from creation. Transcendence is composed of generation; it also includes within itself an earthly mediation. In the same way, openness to God is composed of openness to others and to the world. The transcendence of the person is also a consequence of creaturely love, since procreative generation is intimately united with the creative call. That is why, in the Decalogue, the precept of love for parents is placed in fourth place, as an intermediate between the precepts that express the duties of openness to God and the precepts that express the duties of openness to the world. It is not a matter of pure generosity, but of responding to a worldly component of the creative call.
The creative calling that constitutes a person as such is also the foundation of human plurality, precisely by virtue of its composition with generation.
Evidently, when the relationship with God disappears from view, the staff condition is no staff based on creation and is entrusted entirely to human plurality: to knowledge to relationships with others. The staff condition staff given by society. It is therefore understood that anyone who has not been seen and named by other men is not considered a person. Abortion and infanticide can then be justified. This attitude, although criminal, is understandable when creation is disregarded. It has a certain basis in the fact that the status staff closely linked to "being seen." For this reason, even from the most upright perspective, human culture distinguished and punished in very different ways the killing of someone who had already appeared before men—which was called murder—and the killing of someone who had not yet appeared or had only just been born: abortion or infanticide were punished much more lightly than the murder of a mature person.
2.4. Nature and history: culture and Education.
Philosophy had already affirmed that knowledge first principles was natural but not innate, because it required meeting the world. This becomes apparent when we look closely at the temporal process that leads from birth to human maturation. Modern psychology has attempted to detect and express the decisive nature of the period of a child's life: the mother's lap, which extends to the home environment, is the first manifestation of God in a person's life; of God who is both powerful and good.
The scientist's activity is also based on the fundamental conviction that the chaotic multiplicity of phenomena we observe in the world must have an order, an intelligible meaning. The natural, that is, what man is meant to be according to the design of Creative Wisdom, intrinsically calls for the historical or cultural, which is mediation by other men.
Simply put, to be who they are, people need plurality.
Herein lies the anthropological greatness of Education culture. The right of parents to Education children is not based on a particular school of social thought, but on the very nature of man. It is the affirmation of a divine creative design that allows us to distinguish between Education and Education . Education therefore a service to the truth of the person, that is, to their nature and their natural abilities and inclinations as a person.
Scientism, which starts from the denial of natural meanings and purposes, seeks first and foremost in the field of training eliminate natural purposes, in order to retain exclusively the material components and their properties, among which we could include the sensitive and psychic passions, in order to build with them the social whole, just as artifacts are constructed with raw materials.
Scientism frowns upon classical Education because it is precisely the opposite: classical Education is a bastion of faith in human nature, which implies at least an implicit confession of creation.
Logically, when the crisis of values is total, only the evaluation freedom remains.
But elevating freedom to the supreme value leaves the person mired in skepticism, because no absolute meaning is recognized.
Values are then those created by freedom itself, which are therefore as precarious and contingent as the decision that gave rise to them. The core topic to the fact that freedom is not strictly speaking a human value. It is something more basic: freedom is the condition for the human realization of truth and, therefore, of values.
2.5. Moral law and conscience.
The fact that God creates each person with a view to the generations allows us to speak of a project for humanity in general, since the divine creative design, the human life of each person, has not been willed in isolation or independence, but rather as the life of a person among other persons: "it is not good for man to be alone." God constitutes man in a plural condition, loves the human family of unique and at the same time equal persons. His measure is the law of man as such.
Evidently, in terms of material being or non-personal aspects, the human person is measured by universal laws.
Moral law regulates the person through conscience, which is the organ in which the universal laws of man, as such, are personalized. Personalizing moral laws is not merely internalizing them; personalizing the law means that universally valid moral law is expressed in demands that have personal nuances and that may govern different specific acts.
If we consider negative moral laws, their content is unambiguous, and here, personalization is practically equivalent to internalization. But the content of moral laws is broader. It is imperative for positive acts of virtue, and here the exercise of virtue can be expressed in different acts.
That is the task of conscience: conscience personalizes universal law.
It is there, and not only in the universal call of moral laws, that God's call to each person in the course of their life resounds.
The fact that conscience is the organ of the personalization of the law implies that its training , in addition to sufficient knowledge of universal moral norms, inner refinement or innate familiarity with moral values and with the concrete call of God that moral duty entails.
This innate quality is achieved through attention and faithful attention to moral values and the guidance of good teachers.
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