Biological Ethics

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Chapter 1. Science and the Foundations of Ethics: The Dignity of the Person

Antonio Ruiz Retegui

a) The ethical problem of science

The emergence of bioethics

Biological science has attained a popularity which is rare in the case of the positive sciences, even in this time of consummate enlightenment, when the achievements of the specialised sciences are characteristic of large media outlets knowledge dissemination .

The reason for this popularity is not only the achievement of certain discoveries in their own field. Certainly, in recent years, the biological sciences have achieved spectacular goals, especially in the field of molecular biology. But these discoveries have rarely gone beyond the confines of specialised publications or the high profile knowledge dissemination. The popularity of biology is not so much due to discoveries in the advanced research as to the application internship of certain techniques that have been well mastered for decades, but which have only been applied to humans in the last few decades.

This popularity is not strictly due to the scientific development , but rather to the audacity with which it has been used to intervene in human life. This means, on the one hand, that the most qualified researchers feel a certain uneasiness about this diffusion of biological techniques and about being in the limelight under an aspect that is not really the most scientifically valuable; and, on the other hand, it means that the popularity of biology is a popularity that problematises it: it is not only a popularity of biology, but, simultaneously, a popularity of ethics as a problematisation of the activities of biologists. Bioethics publications have multiplied almost beyond measure, especially in the countries most influenced by the advances in technology, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon countries. It can be said that the explosion of research and publications on Bioethics is an epochal event, which embraces and expresses one of the most peculiar characteristics of this time of ours, qualified as somewhat confusingly post-modern, that is, situated beyond - or "back" - from the modern dreams of building, from scientific rationalism, a world fully adequate to man's humanity. The phenomenon of post-modernism is born of the disenchantment of the project of modernity, whose pretensions have been shown to have failed. Bioethics is one of the cultural realities of post-modernity.

Precedents in Physics

In fact, this crisis of scientistic reason as a world shaper has a kind of forerunner in the history of atomic researchers: from the idyllic confidence and prestige of atomic and nuclear quantum physics in the twenties and thirties of our century, there was a profound crisis after finding of nuclear fission in 1939, and especially after the explosion on 6 August 1945 of a device over the city of Hiroshima1. There was still some hesitation with the "Atoms for Peace" and similar programmes. But in the late 1960s and during the 1970s, the prestige of nuclear physics and the technologies born of it went down the drain. There was an abrupt realisation that these technologies not only did not guarantee a safe humanisation of the world, but posed a serious threat to the scope of human existence. Nuclear technology, which had been a progress laden with future blessings, came to be regarded as a cursed science that could not be accepted even with strong precautions.

The parallel ideological movement was environmentalism, the defence of the natural environment threatened by hard and savage technology. It was repeatedly warned that nature, the "human world", was fragile and could be broken by human technology2. Of course, we are still a long way from having managed to position ourselves adequately to give an answer to this problem that becomes convenient position of all its terms. It can almost be said that the clean and clear rejection of those techniques is a sample that we did not know how to deal with them and that therefore the best thing to do was a passionate and categorical rejection, that is to say, not a rational one. The problem was not "understood" and that is why it has been subject of ideologised treatment, full of passion.

Ethical peculiarities of biology

But without having had the time or the intellectual resources to deal with this problem, another problem of the same nature subject, but more subtle and more difficult to deal with and even to place in its precise terms, has been thrust upon us. It is the problem of the biological manipulation of man.

The issue is not as virulent as that of nuclear technology, its effects are not as directly catastrophic as those of nuclear explosions or accidents. However, the way it affects people makes it even more incisive and complex. Indeed, nuclear catastrophes have the novelty of a terrible destructive reach, but, in a way, they reach each person "from the outside" like conventional destructive weapons. Radioactive afflictions make their consequences more odious, but they do not strictly change their status as a "violent attack" on man. On the contrary, it is man's humanity, his birth, and even his identity staff that, by virtue of the new biological technologies, are directly affected. If the possibilities of unleashing cosmic energies could endanger the survival of humanity, in the case of nuclear technology, now it is no longer humanity in general but the concrete humanity of the individual that is put at stake, with biological technologies.

Thus the question has arisen as to whether the world, dominated by man to this extent, is more human or, on the contrary, turns against man himself. The big question is whether the project of human domination of the world has not become a domination of science over man himself.

b) Ethical nature of human freedom

Freedom and the person

Basically, we are back to the ancient question that gave rise to philosophical reflection on ethics twenty-five centuries ago. This question arose from the awareness of freedom and its transcendence. Man began to think about Philosophy Ethics when he became aware that the exercise of his free action did not simply mean a choice about 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: in choosing about this or that thing, about this or that course of action, man is deciding about himself3. It is the person himself who, as a consequence of his choices, will be fulfilled or frustrated, will attain happiness and fulfilment or sink into disillusionment. This is why the awareness of freedom, with all its depth and scope, confronts man with the question of his responsibility.

The question raised by the modern scientific and technological development is analogous to the one that confronted the Greeks in the 5th century BC, because what we are debating now is whether the material possibilities at our disposal lead us to a more humane world, or a more violent and tyrannical one. We have become aware that our possibilities for action confront us with transcendental alternatives: fulfilment or destruction. We have suddenly found ourselves faced with the decisive responsibility for our free action.

In order to address the cause of this status with a certain knowledge it is necessary to go down to the very principles of human action and its ethical dimension. The questions we are confronted with are so strictly new that it is no longer possible to start from a few conventional references. On the other hand, the discussion in human spheres has come to question such fundamental issues that our reflection must reach the very principle of the ethical dimension of man.

Man's ethical experience is closely linked to the experience of his freedom and the extent of his freedom. This experience confronts man with various ways of fulfilment, some of which are experienced as true fulfilment and others as frustration. But man is not indifferent to these alternatives: it is not the same for him to be fulfilled as to be frustrated. Man, every man, wants to be happy. The question is what that happiness consists of. The frequent experience of disillusionment sample tells us that happiness is not an obvious content goal . The great question of ethics is precisely to determine what it is that we want and how to achieve it. The first and fundamental topic of ethical reflection was not what acts we should carry out and what we should avoid, but what it is that we all want. The Greeks called this object the Good, which was rightly defined as "what everyone wants". But not what everyone wills with their immediate and empirical wills, in all their acts of will, but "what everyone wills deep down", that is, what makes us all will things or acts as a means to something else, willed in itself and final.

The truth about man as a measure of his freedom

If we, when deciding freely, decide in the end about ourselves, the reference letter that warns us about the rightness or wrongness of our free decision will be the truth about ourselves. If we are right in deciding agreement with our truth and we fulfil ourselves, our exercise of freedom will have been successful. But if we decide on a course of action that leads to the experience of frustration, then our freedom has failed. In other words, man immediately realises that his actions involve values or goods of a special nature that absolutely challenge him as a person endowed with freedom. Man is thus caught between the "necessity" with which these values - loyalty, sincerity, justice, etc. - are imposed on him, and the "freedom" of his decision. Ethical experience is presented to us as a synthesis of freedom and necessity. Of freedom, because our will is not physically determined towards any mode of action. Of necessity, because the desire for happiness, for fulfilment, challenges us in an absolute and unavoidable way. agreement The necessity is not of subject physical, because man is not physically forced to realise or act in accordance with his values, but he realises that what he commits himself to with his action is not a mere external reality, but his own person as such.

Indeed, when man acts, he does not only have a psychological conscience, a certain knowledge of the action in its realisation, but he also has a moral conscience, that is, he has knowledge of the appropriateness of the act with the dignity of his own condition as a human person. Thus, when a person betrays a moral value, moral conscience condemns him as a person. It is not the displeasure that follows failure in a sectoral area, i.e. the moral conscience does not say "you are a bad mathematician", or "bad athlete", but "you are bad": it is the basic human experience of the warning of the dignity of the person.

Ordinary language reflects in different ways - for example, it calls evil inhuman - that very profound reality that it immediately perceives in life, in the continuous exercise of its freedom.

If we deny the aspect of freedom and affirm an absolute determinism in behaviour, we are denying ourselves as persons. If we deny the aspect of necessity, that is, if we deny the transcendence of our decision, we are making freedom trivial.

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. This criterion can only be man's truth, which is what is ultimately decided upon. If this reference letter is denied, freedom becomes irrelevant, because it does not decide about anything really important. If it is no different to be selfish or generous, then deciding one way of being or the other is nothing worth thinking about. But this is at odds with our most fundamental human experiences.

The problem with this whole issue is that it involves the most fundamental human questions. Therefore, we would want to be able to treat it with the utmost rigour. We are perhaps used to dealing with relatively insignificant problems in such a rigorous, exact and intersubjectively valid way that we are constantly tempted to claim the same exactness and rigour, and perhaps, above all, the same intersubjective validity, that is, the same claim to acceptance and consensus on the part of others, when the matter at hand is, like the one we are dealing with, of the utmost importance.

However, the picture we find when we try to study fundamental ethical questions in detail is rather bleak. In contrast to the accuracy and rigour of scientific approaches, we often find general statements or considerations whose content is difficult to specify, and whose foundations are far from being acceptable without risk of dispute. Faced with the almost universal acceptance of positive scientific achievements, we find that in the field of ethics, a discussion on a common basis firmly accepted by all is hardly possible. In the contrast between philosophical ethical discussions and scientific communication, one has the feeling that one is inevitably faced with the choice between accuracy or depth. If one wants accuracy and indiscriminate rigour, one has to limit oneself to the study of non-decisive matters, and if one wants depth, and to enter into the most fundamental questions of our life, one has to settle for ethereal expressions that never conclude anything. It seems that we can only know well precisely what we care least to know, but what is most decisive remains unknowable. Is this appearance true, and does it really express reality? If it is not true, what is the fallacy it contains?

Objectivity of ethics

The first problem that ethical reflection must face, and has historically faced, is the problem of the multiplicity, divergence and even civil service examination, of ethical guidelines, i.e. the tremendous differences of opinion that exist in different societies between what is good and what is bad, between what should be done and what should not be done. This argument is often made against claims of objectivity or universal validity of concrete moral requirements. But this is a weak argument, because 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 it4. It was the openness of ancient societies, with the warning of the sharp contrasts in people's behaviour, that raised the need to abandon the criterion of ancestry - "what we have always lived by" - as the criterion of righteousness, and to look for it in the nature of man and things. It was the Greeks who, noticing this divergence, did not limit themselves to condemning the behaviour of others, but wanted to compare it with their own, to see which of these behaviours was more humane, more worthy of man. In this way they abandoned myths as an explanation and foundation for the behaviour 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 right measure for human behaviour. This was the finding of the concept of nature, which marked the beginning of the Philosophy and specifically the origin of the notion of natural law. Human thought followed this path until, in the 17th century, a new way of thinking and of dealing with the decisive questions of human existence burst forth violently.

c) Modern conceptions of ethics

The modern crisis of Philosophy and the birth of scientism

The new approach is born of the conjunction of several factors, of which the two most important are, perhaps, the awareness of the failure of the Classical Philosophy as a pretension to reach wisdom, and the immense prestige that mathematics acquired in the field of knowledge , both in its own rigour and accuracy, and in its usefulness for the true knowledge of the world, for, as Galileo wrote, "mathematics is the language of the world".

The failure of the venerable and ancient attempt of the Philosophy appeared as evident in the fact that no philosophical construction had succeeded in imposing itself on the minds in a decisive and unquestionable way, but had always been followed, as if in its shadow, by sceptical thought. The awareness of this crisis led the leading exponents of the new way of thinking to the conclusion 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 their purposes. The classics, and all human reflection up to modernity, had asked themselves about the essence of things, about what life is, or beauty, or the good.... These are the objects about which there seemed to be no possible agreement . The Philosophy - love or the search for wisdom - had failed to become wisdom. Therefore, they thought, it is better to renounce such a pretentious knowledge and be more modest. Moreover, the fact that mathematics - the only science that could decisively solve the problems posed - was not concerned at all with meanings or finalities, corroborated the position of Withdrawal with regard to decisive questions. In principle, it seems that this Withdrawal implies reducing man to total scepticism in the face of an incomprehensible world. Hobbes acknowledged that this intellectual attitude means making man a stranger in the world which he cannot know, but -he then asserts- there is no need to worry: certainly man cannot know the world, that is, he cannot attain to the proper meanings of the things around him, but this is just what we need in order to master them. We can master the world, because the world is unintelligible5. This is the quintessence of the project of modernity.

The modern idea of world domination

Obviously, to say that the world is unintelligible does not mean that we cannot know anything about the world: it only means that essences and proper meanings and finalities are inaccessible to us. But we can reach another subject of knowledge which is the one that will give us absolute mastery. It is the knowledge of the regularities of behaviour, knowledge of the laws of regularity in facts. knowledge In this perspective, it will be first and foremost knowledge scientific, knowledge of factuality. Meanings and purposes are not properly the object of receptive knowledge , but a matter of human construction and decision. Of the objects that populate the world I can know their factual behavioural properties, but it is useless and sterile to try to find some meaning or purpose. With the knowledge of the facts I can construct whatever I want according to my configuring rationality and my decision. It is a matter of knowing in order to foresee, and foreseeing in order to be able to.

Logically, this subject of knowledge leaves no room for a properly ethical reflection, because Science is essentially evaluative, blind to values, it is, by the restriction it has imposed on itself, incapable of deciding on right or wrong. Science is unaware of the experience we express with the word "ought" (I "ought" to do this, I "ought" to avoid that). At most it can say: "if I use this means, such effects will follow", "if I act in this other way, such other effects will follow". But, in its own sphere, it cannot say to me that some effects are preferable to others, i.e. that they must be preferred. If, however, there are such judgements about what is to be done and what is not to be done, about what is a good use of science and what is not, we find ourselves with statements which, if they go beyond the purely conditional - if I do this, that will produce that - are not susceptible of scientific substantiation.

This way of dealing with nature has produced surprising results and has shown that, as Hobbes said, by paying the price of ignoring natural meanings, that is, by affirming that nature does not speak - does not offer natural meanings to human contemplation - but rather that it does, that is, that it is pure facticity, and therefore significantly neutral, a mastery over nature is achieved that is unprecedented. This mastery is an essential change from man's mastery over the world as it was understood in the pre-modern tradition, which presupposed a respect for nature and the proper purposes of things and beings in the world. It can be argued that this sense of dominion is a radical departure from the pre-modern sense of man's lordship over the world, and so it would be a mistake to understand modern dominion as an adequate expression of the "rule over the earth" found in Genesis.

The recurrence of ethics

Despite the force with which the new perspective has imposed itself on people's mentality, it has not been able to eliminate the ethical question. Logically it cannot be able to do so because ethical experience is a radical dimension of our own human experience. The scientist as a scientist can ignore certain questions, but as a person he constantly encounters them in his own life as a person. We encounter this tension daily in our lives when we notice that in the scientific setting - at laboratory, in the explanations of class, etc. - we reason in a certain way and demand a certain logical rigour, but then, in the properly human conversation, person to person, it is not possible to avoid raising the most fully vital questions; in these areas we demand loyalties, condemn injustices, suffer in our hearts, discuss the possibility of definitive vital commitments, etc. The fact is that it is in these questions, and not in scientific ones, that our lives are at stake. To the extent that rigorous reasoning has been restricted to the scientific, we find ourselves unable to deal deeply with what matters most to us.

The ethical question, indeed, cannot be ignored, and scientific rationality itself has tried to account for it. The ways in which the ethical problem has been dealt with scientifically have historically varied. Without claiming to be exhaustive exhibition , let us look at the most fundamental lines of these attempts.

The transformation of ethics into "science

The first attempt was the transformation of ethics into a "science of morals". The science of morals considers the ethical phenomenon as one of the phenomena that can be objectively observed in the world. It deals with the ethical values prevailing in the various societies, with their reasons for mutual dependence and their logical articulations, but it treats them not as something to be realised in themselves, but just as facts: as just one more of the facts to be found in the world. In other words, it deals with ethical imperatives not ethically, but scientifically, either sociologically or psychologically. The science of morals thus manages to be truly scientific, but, to the same extent, it departs from a properly ethical consideration, i.e. it cannot carry out a "evaluation" of values, because these ethical values are not considered as such, but as facts6.

"Facts" and "values

The need to overcome these limits of the approach of the science of morals, i.e. the need to become position of the true force of ethical imperatives, led to the distinction between "judgements of fact" and "judgements of value". The former would be susceptible of rigorous, i.e. scientific substantiation, and consequently perfect communication can be claimed because they are "objective facts". Value judgements", on the other hand, would not be statements about objective reality, but about the affections that these objective facts produce in the sensibility or emotionality of people. It would be impossible to claim a universal consensus on these judgements, as they would depend on people's training , their tastes, etc7. This division, although it seems to reconquer the peculiarity of the ethical dimension of man, in reality it also annihilates it, by depriving value judgements of their rootedness goal in reality. The pre-modern tradition never spoke of this distinction, and even disregards the expressions factual judgements and value judgements, because it assumed that the objective reality that man is able to reach with his knowledge, is not pure factuality - it is not pure raw fact, without meaning - but was loaded with significance. Evidently there are realities that are more significant than others, and logically when the charge of significance itself is weaker, as in inanimate nature, it is more understandable that what we could call the charge of facticity is more dominant, that is to say that it is less serious, less violent with reality to dispense with its weak significance. The point is that physical science, whose proper object is experimentation, is inanimate nature, the least significant, is the prototype of positive science, and that is why the claim of knowledge rigorous and scientific, inter-subjectively valid, has been circumscribed in the scientistic mentality to pure, objectively described facts. This is particularly traceable in areas that deal precisely with communication, such as the world of journalism. The onslaught of the scientistic mentality has its clearest example in the mentality with which the mass media present themselves, claiming to present objective facts, without any pretensions to evaluation . But apart from the fact that the very selection of the facts that are transmitted already implies a selective criterion about what makes a fact significant "as news", the claim to pure description of objective facts, if it transcends mere mechanical, i.e. physical, description, is already loaded with evaluations. Who could claim that murder is only a notion born of the meeting between an objective reality and the sensibility of people due to the cultural training ? When we say that murder, or lying, is evil, we are expressing an objective reality, i.e. real because nature "speaks", not certainly with human words, but with meanings that are attainable by an attentive mind.

Moral scepticism

The sharp distinction between facts and values is one of the clearest practical manifestations of the denial of natural meanings and the consequent conviction that man can only know what he has made. Although this will be discussed again when considering the ethical criteria of man's dominion over nature, the denial of natural meanings precludes the acceptance of any meaning that is imposed on me and, therefore, that I cannot exclusively dominate. Life, love, loyalty, happiness, etc., are concepts that I have not invented, whereas artefacts, as such, do have a rationality that is the measure of man's intelligence, and can therefore be fully understood. The ethical interpellation always has the character of something that is imposed on me, something that I did not create, and to which the appropriate attitude is that of a docile response. If these interpellatory meanings are denied, their origin will have to be referred to another form of human creation, such as the cultural one.

Today, the distinction between facts and values, judgements of fact and judgements of value, has the manifestation of Withdrawal to rational discussion in the field of ethics, i.e. the affirmation of the impossibility of any dialogue, on accepted common ground, on ethical problems. This is indeed the inner atmosphere of most of the meetings dealing with these issues. All that can be claimed is a weak compromise in which incommunicable positions try to reach an area of coexistence. The conclusion is logical, for by uprooting ethics from reality, moral convictions are reduced to purely immediate, unjustifiable affections, and trying to give universal validity to an immediate, incommunicable conviction is what has always been defined as fanaticism. When natural meanings are denied, anyone who claims to propose a form of conduct as universally valid will be branded a fanatic. The question then is not to accumulate reasons of convenience or utility, but to reconquer the ability to look at reality as it is, and to recognise the human capacity to know it despite the temptation of scepticism, which is inevitable.

Utilitarianism and consequentialism: their contradictions

But the conviction that ethics must be universally valid is also unavoidable. People can peacefully accept that different societies have different systems of weights and measures. All that is required then is a table of conversions. But when the differences concern matters that affect man in his humanity, divergence or civil service examination cannot be admitted without abdicating our human condition. In the ethical reflection of our time there is a whole line of thought which tries to satisfy, to some extent, the demand for universality, but without yet departing from the modern dogma of the denial of proper meanings in nature. This line of thought has been called utilitarianism or, more modernly, consequentialism or the ethics of responsibility. Its argumentation takes the reference letter for the goodness or malice of acts not from the nature or significance itself, which is denied, but from the effects it produces in the course of the world. Goodness or badness would be deduced from the good or bad effects that an action has. It is called the ethics of responsibility because the nerve of its reasoning is taken from the awareness that modern man has of the world, of history, as a human construction8. In reality, all ethics is an ethics of responsibility because acts can only be considered in their reality of producing effects, whether these are internal to the person who acts or external to him or her. But what is peculiar to modern ethics of responsibility is the denial of any meaning of actions themselves, referring all their meaning, and therefore all their ethical quality, to the effects they produce in the human world. The immediate problem posed to this subject of ethics is to find a criterion for assessing which of the worlds that man can produce is better, and therefore preferable, and which is worse and should therefore be avoided. According to classical ethics, the consequences of actions must also be taken into account. But in classical ethics there is a criterion goal to indicate which world is better; it is precisely reference letter to the moral quality: a world where loyalty, justice, piety, fidelity, the inviolable dignity of the person prevails is superior, and therefore humanly preferable to a world in which these moral qualities are absent or hindered. However, in modern consequentialism, this path of evaluation has been closed a priori because it is claimed that there are no moral qualities susceptible of grade of their own, but that all moral grade depends on consequences. This leads to circular reasoning in which it is affirmed that an action that gives rise to a good world is good, but in turn the world is good if it contains attitudes and evaluations that lead to an attitude manager of building a good world.... The grade of "good" is always referred to subsequent instances and can never be given a determined material content. This problem of the consequentialist foundation of the morality of actions was well seen by Charles V when he gave Luther a safe conduct and demanded that his knights respect it scrupulously. Then the Emperor wondered whether it might not have been more useful for the salvation of the religious unity of the Empire not to respect this safe conduct and to put to death the one who threatened the subsistence of the Empire. The question then was, what sense would it make to maintain at all costs an Empire in which the Emperor's safe conduct was not respected? It is a mode of reasoning that takes into account the consequentialist temptation, but overcomes it by affirming the absolute value of loyalty. It can be said that Charles V's attitude was consequentialist in the classical sense, i.e. he took into account the consequences of his action, evaluating them according to the absolute criterion of moral values.

In reality, modern theories of consequentialism, as well as earlier moral theories of the scientific foundation of human conduct, even if they claimed to be all-encompassing explanations of ethical questions, were based on a large number of existing moral values, which allowed human conduct and the life of society in general to continue without any particular fuss. The scientific foundations of ethics and social life, although they were supposed to be a total explanation of reality, in reality did not realise that the scientific society they were trying to build was also based on a huge accumulation of personal and social virtues that were in force as a consequence of centuries of Christian civilisation. If at first scientism was able to be intoxicated with optimism about a future scientifically constituted society, this is no longer possible today. By dint of not teaching, the virtues have been disappearing from people's hearts and scientific technology is sample incapable of shaping a strong and humane society. A tree can be cut down and its crown placed on a concrete column: for some time it will continue to offer welcoming shade, but separated from the root that gave it life, it will inevitably die. This is the spectacle we can contemplate in any advanced technical society: the negation of absolute moral values leads to the disintegration of society. The most perfect laws will not suffice because there will be no possible criterion by which to show that laws must be obeyed. The growth of police forces to enforce laws will become unlimited, and in the end even order itself will have to be founded among the police forces.

The crisis of ethical scientism

This disintegration of morality has the enormous counterbalance of people's own natural sense which, however obscured, will always be an inextinguishable orientation, and will recurrently raise the need for virtue staff. The most seasoned spirits will notice that even the most radically positivist in their theoretical approaches are not entirely positivist in their own conduct. After all, they are people too, and they always manifest a residue of personal virtues. But this does not solve the problem of the moral decay of a civilisation. In the process of disintegration we do not yet know the limits that can be reached. The onslaught of the positivist mentality, with its denial of any universally valid moral values goal , is now producing its effects, because it is now that we have come to the explicit affirmation and application internship, even in the teaching of children, of what until a few decades ago were the assertions of salon intellectuals. The status is similar to that of those intellectuals of the nobility who in the salons of the 18th century argued unrestrainedly about the rationalisation of society and the sovereignty of the infallible people. They argued, juggling intellectually, about the protective network of social virtues and the human nobility that had been handed down from tradition9. Even Marie Antoinette when she was Dauphine of France went to visit Rousseau's tomb in the gardens of Ermenonville. For them it was an interesting intellectual game. In fact, his views were added to many other elements of their world view. When they spread those theories net and naked to a people who did not have the same premises as they did, their own social order was turned upside down and their heads were cut off by virtue of the very intellectual principles they taught separately from the enormous prior baggage they possessed, implicitly, and which they did not express. This is the problem that arises whenever a critical attitude is adopted towards the theoretical and practical values of any society. Criticism is mainly used to adduce the necessary correctives. There is no need to underline the broad rationale because that is already done by others. The danger arises when the correctives are raised to the level of absolutes by force of chance or by provocation. The consequences are terrible, because correctives elevated to absolutes require even stronger correctives than what has been sanctioned and corrected by life itself.

Our current status is one of such an inflation of correctives elevated to absolutes that dangers threaten from the most varied fronts. This is why we do not need new correctives to ethical attitudes, not even correctives to correctives elevated to absolutes, but a total foundation, starting from the very principle of ethics itself. This foundation will have to account not only for the solutions to the concrete problems that arise in the various spheres of human action, i.e. it cannot be a collection of isolated solutions to isolated cases, but it will have to explain the nature of the ethical dimension of man and the principles on which the solutions to the various concrete problems are based. In this way we will also have sufficient criteria to deal with the strictly new problems that arise with man's growing dominance over the world and over man himself.

Back to basics

The nature of ethical experience, as a synthesis of freedom and necessity, which we described at the beginning of this chapter, refers in its foundation to the very principles of the truth of man as an interpellant truth for freedom.

In fact, ethical experience is basically the experience in which the person realises that the truth about himself absolutely challenges him. Man experiences himself as a task to be accomplished. This is the fundamental task of one's own life and is not comparable with the realisation of any other task goal. What is being decided here is not the realisation of one's own possibilities in sectoral areas: it is not the realisation as a sportsman or musician or scientist that is being discussed, but one's own fulfilment staff. The frequent expression "I have to fulfil myself", albeit in a confused and not precisely articulated way in the person who utters it, is also a manifestation, at the level of the psychological consciousness, of the radical ethical imperative. Admittedly, this mode of expression often includes a confusion between the realisation of the person and the realisation of sectoral possibilities. But the force with which this requirement is experienced sample is not an accidental requirement but a requirement of what is most nuclear and proper to the person.

The same ethical imperative frequently appears in another form which is perhaps the most radical conscious manifestation of its demand. It is the demand or will to meaning. There is a whole school of psychiatry -Logotherapy10 - that gravitates around the consideration of the will to meaning as a basic human existential dimension. The will to meaning has frequent and varied expressions in ordinary language, phrases such as "I don't understand myself" or "What is the meaning of my life?" do not appeal to a mere theoretical knowledge or to how my vital activity fits in with that of others. The question of meaning cannot be answered with theoretical arguments. It goes beyond what can be explained in words or speeches. We all know that a "crisis of meaning" cannot be solved with words. Deep down, the meaning of what we do and live, what gives us the fundamental energy for the task of living, can only be based on something that makes sense in itself, not in terms of something else, i.e. on something that makes absolute sense. This cannot be any human creation. If it is said that it is man with his freedom that gives meaning to all his actions, it seems that man is exalted. In reality, he is radically depressed, because all meaning available is therefore precarious.

The true face of the scientistic world is not the technopolis, nor is it the violated nature, but the lifeless face of man sunk in the crisis of meaninglessness, the bored, hopeless, disillusioned and discouraged man: a man without a soul to encourage him to live.

Only the fact that there is a truth about man, which is both a foundation and a stimulus for his life, can endow his life with meaning. Then, and only then, can what is realised be endowed with authentic human vital meaning, because it is rooted in something that has absolute meaning. Only if life is the path to the fulfilment of this truth can it be meaningful, rich, exciting, without deception.

But the absolute character of man's truth requires a foundation. The absolute interpellation that man experiences in ethical experience with respect to his own truth refers, in order to be intellectually balanced, to a foundation of an absolute character. We could say that man experiences himself as an absolute - i.e. as a being that cannot be fully functionalised - in need of a foundation, i.e. as a "relational absolute" founded on an "absolute-absolute". Only this relation can provide an adequate explanation both of the existence of man's truth and of his character as an absolute good that absolutely challenges human freedom in ethical experience.

d) Creationist foundation of ethics

Moral value and creation

Creation can be considered from various perspectives, but to understand it as the simple position of the existence or bestowal of being would be a reductionism. If the Creator is not a universal principle but a Being staff, the creative act will be intelligent and free. This is why creation can be seen as the fruit of creative Wisdom or creative Love. As the fruit of creative Wisdom, creatures are adequate to an intelligence and are therefore intelligible and ontologically true, that is, in their very essence adequate to creative Wisdom: thus we know because creatures are intelligible, but they are intelligible because in their essence they have been constituted by an Intelligence. Hence it is said that the Intelligence of God "measures" and is not "measured" by anything; creatures are "measured" by the Wisdom of God and "measure" the human knowledge ; and the latter is "measured" by the truth of things and does not "measure" them, except artificial ones.

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 bestowal of being, the bringing into existence, the creative knowledge and the creative Love: they constitute a single act, distinguishable only from the partiality of our perspective; in reality the infinite Being is identical with Wisdom and Love. But, depending on whether we are interested in studying one aspect or another of created things, we can take as guide one of the aspects of the act of creation. In order to consider the intrinsic goodness or value of creatures, we must therefore consider creation in the perspective of creative Love.

Of course, we cannot scrutinise creative Love and contemplate how each creature has been loved in order to deduce from it what Degree of kindness, of goodness it possesses, but we can deduce, from observation of the world, some of its characteristics.

Absolute value of the person

We have already shown that the human person is presented, especially in ethical experience, as a good in itself, i.e. not relative to something else. This affirmation can be regarded as universally recognised as self-evident. However, the absolute value of the human person raises an intellectual question: how is it possible that the concrete human person, in its evident contingency, presents itself to me as an absolute value? The only possible answer lies, according to what we have said above about creative Love, in the fact that the human person, each human person, has been willed for himself 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 directly for an attentive look, particularly in the ethical experience which is an original experience. But its rational explanation is, ultimately written request, that it has been willed for itself by God. If the human person appears as absolutely valuable, i.e. lovable in itself, it is because it has been loved in itself by God. The person is the only creature we find in the world that possesses this dignity. We can affirm, with the whole Christian tradition, that man is the only creature in the world that God loves in himself11.

The fullness of man and his absolute value

The affirmation of the absolute value of the person still needs to be clarified. Indeed, each of us experiences himself as a good, but not yet definitive, but rather as project. Man lives not in the satisfaction of what he already is, but in the hope of what he is not yet, as if in tension towards a fullness not yet possessed. The ethical dimension that characterises all of man's actions shows that his life is a path towards self-fulfilment as a person. The conscience is precisely the light that guides and orients him on this path, warning him which acts realise his dignity and which destroy it.

This experience is adequately explained by a more precise consideration of creative Love. Indeed, if man sees himself as endowed with an inviolable dignity, and at the same time sees himself as a task or project to be accomplished, it must be because what God wanted in creating us was not simply the human person in his essential contents, but man fulfilled, in the fullness of properly human life, that is, man who has fulfilled his boundless aspiration for love and knowledge. This is why we too are presented with every person as worthy of love, not only in what he or she already is. It would not be right to love a needy, hungry, ignorant or oppressed person merely by indulging in his present status . To love him for himself means to love him in the fullness of life, to love him happily, and to do everything possible to free him from what is hindering him. If creative Love refers to man in the fullness to which he aspires - which is fullness of love and happiness, without the fear of separation and frustration - it cannot refer to man in the present worldly status : only in the consideration of man's transcendent destiny does the meaning and scope of creation as the loving act of a God become clear staff.

The creative design of divine Love is man in his happiness final, and therefore his radical "truth" - the reason for his intelligibility - is his status of fullness, for that is the design of creative Wisdom, what God "has known" in creating him, that is, the divine knowledge which measures the truth of man. This is why the condemnatory sentence of the Judge of the last day sounds: "I do not know you". In the status on the way to fullness, man is not yet fully intelligible in himself. Similarly, that which 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 the present status he is still at risk of frustration.

Human life as a path to fulfilment staff

The status is paradoxical. We have said in principle that God's Love is efficacious, but now we notice that, it seems, the creative design is not fulfilled immediately, but is presented to us sample as something that requires process, time. Indeed, it is so; and it cannot be otherwise. If the creative design of divine Love is man in fullness of life, it cannot be achieved immediately, because the fullness of man implies in itself the very partnership fullness of man, since it is a fullness of love, and love presupposes initiative staff of the one who loves: love cannot impose itself. The immediate creation of a "man given out of love" is not possible - possibly contradictory - because the submission of love must have its beginning in the person himself. The "space" of this acceptance is life as we experience it in our status. It is therefore true biographical life - and not merely development of biological factors - the history of salvation staff, of the realisation of one's own truth. It follows, then, that the creative design achieves its effect with a temporal status , as in two "moments": one, first, in which the subject is constituted as a free being destined for love; a second moment, in which the same design reaches its fullness when man's freedom effectively opts for its truth and is submission in love.

The full anthropological and transcendent depth of the creature's freedom is thus revealed. It is only when man freely submission himself to the realisation of his truth - which is an implicit or explicit submission to the call of creative Love - that is, when man freely allows himself to be loved, accepting and consenting to creative Love, that his own truth is fulfilled, and that which God has willed for himself effectively attains its absolute value.

The human person is therefore of absolute value not so much for what he already is, but for what he is called to be, always bearing in mind that this call is not something that is added to the man already constituted: it is what has given rise to him and has placed him in the ontological and existential position in which he finds himself.

Frustration possible

This correspondence of man may not take place when the person, in his freedom, refuses to respond to God's Love and to accept his "truth" about himself, closing himself off to realise his own project outside the creative plan. Then the divine project on the person is truncated and man is frustrated: he remains "half-created", halfway between nothingness and life. This is precisely what the conscience warns when, faced with moral evil, it condemns the person in himself: you are evil. It is not a matter of being deprived of a more or less valuable quality, nor of having failed in a sectoral area, but of having decayed one's own being staff, of having stripped oneself of one's own value by refusing to realise it in fullness. This is why the most radical thinkers have always conceived moral malice as a "fall into nothingness", as St. Augustine said; and Camus, from an atheistic perspective, affirms: "there is only one serious philosophical problem: suicide". The widespread invasion of nihilism among the most consistent and radical deniers of transcendence manifests the inevitable psychological repercussions of the denial of God the Creator.

Value of human life

With this we have the ultimate keys to an adequate explanation of human life. What we have seen tells us that, even within human existence, life can be understood according to different aspects. Life as the fullness of existence corresponds exclusively to the status final and ultimate life of man who has consented to the call of creative Love. Man's historical existence is certainly a form of life, but it is not yet fully good and lovable life in itself in an absolute sense. Moreover, stripped of its dimension as a path of hope and fulfilment, it can present itself as something that is not at all worthy of being loved and lived: life without meaning, that is, without purpose or hope of fulfilment, becomes unbearable and abhorrent. If historical life has value, it is because of its intrinsic connection with the fullness to which it aims, but in itself it has neither its raison d'être, nor its intelligibility, nor its reason for goodness and value. Certainly it is something, but it is more "way to being" than "definitive being", it can still be frustrated. It can be understood to a certain extent, but an understanding only of what man already is in this status would not suffice for him to understand himself and give meaning to his existence; it is a very valuable good, but above all, insofar as it is lived in the submission, as a path to the fullness of goodness. What is characteristic of the present status is that it is not simply a reduced version of the fulfilled life, i.e. it is not a different life, but the same life that is called to fullness, but still unfulfilled. This is why we find in our status aspects of fullness already noted, and therefore of absolute good, mixed with aspects that are irremissibly precarious, in a status that bears the mark of provisionality inscribed in itself.

e) The ethical knowledge

Self-knowledge of man in ethical experience

The status on the way to fullness is perceived by man in his actions when, in the exercise of his freedom, he is confronted with the peculiar interpellation of moral duty. Moral duty is thus the interpellation that man's fullness, i.e. his own truth, addresses to his freedom. It can therefore be said that, in the moral dimension of his action, man attains a perfect self-knowledge, i.e. 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 with his own truth staff, and therefore the action is presented in this experience as absolutely worthy or unworthy of being carried out.

How does perfect self-knowledge take place?

Ethical reason is not instrumental

First of all, it must be affirmed that it is not a thematic or explicit knowledge , but an athematic or implicit one. By this we mean that in moral action man does not start from an explicit knowledge of himself in order to deduce from this knowledge whether or not an action is adequate to realisation. This is not the way moral experience takes place, that is to say, the rationality that takes place in ethical experience is not of the subject of the one that is exercised when one has knowledge of a goal and from that knowledge one deduces the adequate means that can allow its realisation. In short, ethical rationality is not a form of instrumental rationality, it is not a form of rationality that establishes the means to achieve an end12.

Practicality of knowledge moral

What is explicitly known in moral action is precisely the act 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 the knowledge proper and specifically moral is a practical knowledge , that is to say, a knowledge that accompanies and directs the action, guiding the correct use of freedom13. The rightness of our actions does not derive directly from their adaptation to universal norms, in the same way that the rightness of a constructive process derives from its exact adaptation to previously established plans. The upright man is not the one who makes his conduct a "case" that exactly reflects the universal law. This is by no means to say that there are no universally valid moral requirements or standards. He warns only that right action is not measured by the universal rule , in the same way that the law of universal gravitation measures the attraction of masses. This is not only untrue, but also patently impossible: the rightness or prudence of our actions cannot be learnt by lessons or books, as theoretical knowledge is learnt. What is prudent action is not a theoretical question, but a question of internship, i.e. linked to status and concrete circumstances; therefore only the prudent person can "know" in each case, the person who has such a connaturality with the values at stake in each case status, that he or she is able to find the right solution in each case.

The value of the person underpins non-human values

The practical character of the moral knowledge not only does not prevent the theoretical knowledge , but demands it. Indeed, in moral experience man attains a self-knowledge which, as we said, is the most perfect self-knowledge that a person can attain, since it supposes a knowledge of one's own truth as it is in creative Wisdom. But this knowledge takes place not thematically and explicitly, but through the warning of what is being done or is going to be done. The moral demand is presented explicitly as a demand for fidelity to reality: a demand to treat reality as it is. For this reason, when we speak of explicit knowledge , of what is being done, we are not referring to a knowledge of the mechanical happening of the action in question, and much less to a knowledge of its scientific description. knowledge of moral action is knowledge of its implication of moral reality, that is, knowledge of 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 proper good, and the only good capable of absolutely interpellating freedom is the absolute good, i.e. the human person. Other realities, in which the value of the person is not directly involved, are not in themselves capable of absolutely appealing to freedom, and therefore of giving rise to a true and proper ethical experience. For this reason it would be immoral to treat the person in a purely instrumental and relative way, that is, in a way contrary to his condition as an absolute good that must be willed for its own sake. But it would also be unworthy of the human dignity of the person who acts by treating a non-human reality in a way that would regard it as an absolute good. Such conduct would be immoral because it would not do justice to the reality of things.

The value of non-human realities

The fact that a human person is the only good willed by God for himself, while telling us that other creatures are not absolute goods, tells us that they have been willed by God in the act of creative love for man, and are therefore goods relative to man: not absolute goods, but objective and real goods, because they have been willed by God, but not absolute but relative to man, because they have been willed - and therefore created - in relation to the creature staff human. In this way, non-human creatures challenge freedom and demand to be treated according to their objective condition. Since they do not have an absolute goodness, they are not the object of moral interpellation as such, but this in no way means that they are pure material available for caprice, without any restriction. According to their Degree ontological connection or proximity to man, they are like an incarnation of the absolute human good, and it is up to human dignity to do justice to this reality. Thus, for example, animals can be used for the good of man, they can be bred and sacrificed to provide food or to help science: they are not, like the human person, beings worthy of absolute respect. But it would be unworthy of the human person to treat them as purely objects of thoughtless manipulation; it would be unworthy because it would not do justice to their status as relative but objective goods.

Value of human existential dimensions

Similarly, those dimensions of human existence which do not in themselves constitute the person in his absolute dignity are not to be treated as absolute goods, and it would be unworthy of the person to treat these dimensions as if they in themselves called for a properly moral requirement. Health, beauty, bodily 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 in themselves express the proper good of the human person, and therefore should not be considered as absolute goods, proper objects of moral interpellation. If, however, they are considered in an absolute way and are identified with one's own dignity staff, this would do violence to reality. But in no way can it be said that, because they are not identical with the absolutely worthy reality staff , they can be treated without any limits. Although they are not the good staff they are closely linked to it, and therefore, although they are not the object of moral interpellation, they are not completely alien to these interpellations. In this sense, it is very important to note that, even if there are no universal moral determinations for certain technical interventions on the human body, for example, in the case of "inter vivos" organ transplants, and it can be said that they are, in principle, licit, it cannot be said that we are in a field in which technology has no human limits: the person who acts in this field has the moral duty to consider that, although he or she is not dealing with an absolute good that absolutely challenges him or her, he or she is dealing with objective goods, closely linked to the absolute good of the person, which demand that justice be done to them, that is, that they be treated not as technical material available without further ado, but as realities charged with their own, albeit relative, meaning.

The fundamental question to be known in acting is in what way the action being performed or to be performed involves the human person. At bottom, the teaching on the morality of acts is a teaching on that basic question.

Access to knowledge moral concrete

The way in which a person learns these moral qualifications is very varied. Some acts are almost obviously linked to the person, which is why almost all people agree on the corresponding moral judgement. Other acts show their connection to the person and thus their moral demands through the experience of generations, which is why these evaluations are acquired through tradition. This is logical, since some cultural traditions can achieve moral dimensions that have not been achieved by others. Thus, for example, it was the modern industrial development that raised and manifested dimensions of human coexistence that had been ignored in other natural circumstances. It is a sign of wisdom to embrace the finding of the human dimensions involved in certain acts and experiences, and to incorporate them into one's own moral heritage14.

In this respect it is particularly important to note that some acts involve reality in their own way staff. In these cases we find acts that have a moral qualification of their own, i.e. they are acts in themselves, and, without needing any additional qualification on the part of the person who performs them or the circumstances in which they take place, they are an interpellation of freedom with a properly moral interpellation, i.e. with an interpellation that is an expression of the absolute value of the person. At summary, they are acts that make an absolute demand on freedom.

Universality of moral precepts

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?

First of all, it should be noted that the existence of such acts is not self-evident. Certainly we find traditional moral imperatives that express the requirement or prohibition of certain acts, but at the same time we rarely find moral precepts that require or prohibit certain acts that do not admit of exceptions. The existence of exceptions is an unmistakable sample that the interpellation of the relevant precept is not absolute, but dependent on other factors. Thus, for example, the precept of not mutilating oneself traditionally admits the exceptions of therapeutic mutilation. Even the precept "not to kill" has in traditional morality the exceptions of self-defence, just war and the death penalty. The curious thing is that, despite these exceptions, traditional moral reflection presented the requirement of these precepts as absolute, not relative. The appearance of contradiction is evident. Indeed, we are faced with a question in which reflection must be extremely attentive in order to get to the heart of the matter and not fall into the easy arguments of the rhetoric of ideologies.

Exceptions" to moral precepts: precepts and values

The problem of exceptions to moral precepts can only be solved by considering the true meaning of those precepts. It is only on the basis of such a conception that a judgement can be made as to the reality of the existence of exceptions. The nature of moral precepts must be understood in the light of the very nature of the moral requirement, and this requirement is the interpellation presented by the human person. For this reason, the meaning of moral precepts is not something that can be reached from an understanding of the purely linguistic, legal or historical expression of the precept, but from the value staff that it tries to express. The moral precept usually takes the form of an imperative proposition of an act. But the act is not to be understood in its material occurrence but in its human significance. In other words, the proposition of a moral precept must be understood from the moral value, or in other words, from the aspect of the value of the person whose demand it expresses. We will not understand the meaning and the requirement of the precept "do not kill" if we fail to understand the value staff that it expresses, and that moral value is not purely physical life, since physical life is not a moral value, although it is certainly closely linked to it. We will return to the question of physical life later. What we are now interested in emphasising is that since the moral precept in its propositional imperative formulation is an expression of the requirement of moral value, it is almost impossible for the concrete form taken by the precept to express adequately or exhaustively the corresponding moral value, at least in positive precepts15.

Therefore, it is fundamental for an adequate approach of moral problems to overcome the vision of morality exclusively as a set of propositionally formulated precepts to which man has to submit his conduct in an analogous way to how juridical laws determine human conduct. Indeed, juridicism is one of the greatest dangers to a correct understanding of morality. When things are seen in this perspective, that is to say, when it is considered that the ultimate and final reference letter of morality are the precepts, it is impossible to avoid the recognition that some precepts, in certain cases, are in conflict with others, and that, then, the inferior ones have to yield to the superior ones. This is a serious juridicist deformation of morality because it deprives all precepts, except perhaps the first or highest of all, of their absolute, i.e. properly moral, character.

In reality, the requirement of moral values, insofar as they are requirements of the absolute value of the person, cannot admit of exceptions. The question is to determine moral values and to express them adequately in propositions that can be a guideline internship for concrete conduct. In this sense, we can say that the first form that moral precepts take is the form of demands of virtues: "you must act justly", "you must be loyal", "you must be temperate", .... This form of demand is absolute because the virtues are the expression of the whole value of the person in each of his operative adequacies, that is, they are the way in which the person is committed, as a person, in the performance of each of his operative dimensions.

The morality of concrete acts

However, these forms of demand are still somewhat "formal", i.e. they do not formulate demands for concrete acts. The question is whether there are acts that commit the person as such in their own right. This is the question we asked ourselves at the beginning. Obviously, if acts are considered in their material occurrence, they can in no way be considered to involve the person as such: a mechanical or positive scientific description of an act cannot even glimpse the involvement of the person. Therefore, from a scientistic perspective, it is inadmissible that there are acts that can be susceptible of a moral qualification of their own. In this perspective, every act is seen with the burden staff that the person who performs it freely places on it. But this intellectual position aprioristically closes its gaze to dimensions of reality that are attainable by any attentive gaze. In order to see whether a concrete act involves the person, we must ask ourselves what the person does in that concrete act. This question does not refer to the material happening, susceptible to a morphological, mechanical or scientific description. The same material event can "do" very different things in the person, for example, the same material gesture of the smile can be approval or irony, the slap can be vexation and offence staff or it can also be correction moved by maternal affection; the sexual donation can be donation staff or selfish satisfaction of the desire for pleasure... The mere material description of the act cannot give information about the human meaning from which the moral grade takes its principle.

Universality of concrete moral laws

In a positivist perspective, the only possible objective consideration is that which is made on the facts, on mechanical factuality, and mechanical factuality being absolutely ambiguous with respect to the moral grade , it is concluded that there can be no absolute moral determination considering the fact itself. In this perspective there can be no acts susceptible of a universally valid moral grade . The only grade would be given by the meaning given to that act by the one who performs it.

However, this conclusion, which is very widespread today, in its scientistic apriorism, is indebted to a sharp division between the objectivity of facts and the subjectivity of values. In reality, in many acts there is a meaning of its own that is inscribed before the meaning that the person who performs it wants to give it. Examples of these acts are communication staff through language, communication staff through sexuality and communication staff through corporeality in general16.

a) The demand for truth. - The condition of man as a being who can communicate with other people through words entails the requirement not to lie, once the sphere of true communication staff has been established. In this sense, the precept "do not lie" is universally valid and admits of no exceptions. This is so, because once the sphere of true communication staff has been established, the expression staff through words commits the person as such, and if the person is lied to, he or she is being violated. This violation may be more or less serious, but it is always unlawful. Obviously, the condition that we have pointed out, that a real sphere of communication has been established staff, is indispensable: neither the "once upon a time..." of fairy tales, nor saying something contrary to the truth when the interrogation is overwhelming, can properly be said to be a lie. But this does not mean that we are placing ourselves in a purely subjectivist perspective. The establishment of communication between people is an objective status , and when it is established, the use of speech in communication is not subject to arbitrariness, it cannot be used according to whim, or convenience, or whatever meaning one wishes to give it: it already has a meaning that is in itself obligatory for freedom.

b) The demands of human sexuality staff . - Similarly, the communication staff that is established in sexual intercourse has a meaning of its own that does not depend on the will of the one who acts. This is so because in the strictly sexual relationship what people do is not something that can be adequately expressed in mechanical or anatomical or physiological terms. Such descriptions, however accurate they may be, fall short of the meaning staff of these acts. Sexual intercourse, as we shall see in the chapter on sexuality, is a peculiar form of donation, in that it is not simply the giving of cells, but a peculiar form of donation staff: what is given is not seminal fluid but the person himself. Logically, this statement cannot be scientifically verified, but it is a warning staff for careful consideration. For this reason, sexual intercourse requires that the donation staff which it presupposes, that is, which it expresses and realises, be consented to, that is, that it be linked to a consent with the meaning proper to the sexual act: the consent required of the persons who perform it is, in essence, to make their own, to assume personally, the meaning staff of that act. For this very reason, sexual intercourse can be subject to its own moral imperatives: for example, it can never be licit, i.e. it is always a violation of the absolute dignity of the person, to have sexual intercourse with a person to whom one has not given oneself with the submission expressed and realised in the sexual act, i.e. with a person to whom one is not united in marriage. Indeed, it is the proper meaning of the sexual act that underlies the content and scope of marital consent, which, because it is based on a natural meaning, can in no way be manipulated by human agency. Thus the affirmation that it is always immoral to have sexual intercourse with a person who is not one's own spouse expresses a moral requirement that has no exceptions.

c) The demands of human corporeality staff . - The third area we pointed out is that of communication staff through corporeality in general. People are not only vulnerable through deception or sexual disorder; the person is also vulnerable through the fact of corporeality. In this sense, respect for the person has to be expressed in attention with their corporeality, and it is never licit to carry out acts in which an aggression is made against the dignity staff through their corporeality. As in the previous cases, it can also be said here that the description of the facts does not go to the heart of the matter: a slap or any other gesture may not be an aggression to the person, but when they imply an aggressive affection to the person, they are always morally illicit. Certainly here we do not find, as in the case of sexuality, concrete acts with their own significance staff , but when this significance is established, the acts themselves become morally questioning. Moreover, in the field of corporeality, the range of cases that can occur is wide: it involves not only the body, but also the realities closely linked to it. A person's corporeality can be violated not only through strictly corporal aggression, but also through the mistreatment of their clothing or their intimate room. In this sense, although materially it is a matter of things, tearing off one's clothes or violently trampling the home or the most personal things, is also a violation of the person who lives in them, and therefore always morally illicit. This is the traditional meaning of "do not steal", and not a mere protection of the domain of mercantile possessions: private property, traditionally, did not refer to wealth that was potentially the object of the market, but to the sphere of existence staff. This is why its defence was sanctioned by a moral precept, i.e. a requirement rooted in the absolute dignity of the person.

The knowledge of the rules and the righteousness of knowledge morals

The knowledge of the scope staff of the acts that man performs is a condition of possibility for right action on the internship. In this sense, the moral rationality internship that accompanies man in his action, which is determined by the lawfulness or unlawfulness of his actions, depends on the theoretical, i.e. universal, knowledge on the moral quality of his actions. This is why tradition taught that the practical moral judgement - which is called "judgement of conscience" or simply "conscience" - is the proximate moral rule , i.e. the immediate reference letter which a person encounters in order to act rightly; but that conscience must be true, i.e. adequate to the truth about man, about his absolute dignity, and about the implication of this dignity in concrete acts. When this implication is recognised, the formulation of universally valid moral precepts becomes possible. These precepts must be known and constitute the necessary reference letter for practical judgements in action.

When, on the contrary, the implication of the dignity of the person in acts is denied, the possibility of universal moral precepts will also be denied, and the primacy of guidance in conduct will be entrusted to reason internship "at status": ethics will decay into situationism, or utilitarianism, or consequentialism, which, as we have seen, entail an arbitrary restriction of the gaze on the meaning of reality.

f) bibliography

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(2) SCHUMACHER, E.F. "Small is beautiful". Blume. Madrid, 1978.

(3) CAFFARRA, C. "Viventi in Cristo". Jaca Book. Milan, 1981, pp. 120-125.

(4) STRAUSS, L. "Natural Right and History". University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1953, pp. 81-119.

(5) STRAUSS, L. "Natural Right and History". University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1953, pp. 170-177.

(6) STRAUSS, L. "Natural Right and History". University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1953, pp. 35-80.

(7) VOEGELIN, E. "Nueva ciencia de la política". Rialp. Madrid, 1968, pp. 24-45.

(8) SPAEMANN, R. "Wer hat wofür Verantwortung". Herder-Korrespondenz, 36, 345-350 and 403-408, 1982.

(9) TOCQUEVILLE, A. DE. "The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, III, chap. 1. Alianza. Madrid, 1982.

(10) FRANKL, V. "Psychoanalysis and existentialism". FCE, Mexico, 1950.

(11) CAFFARRA, C. "Viventi in Cristo". Jaca Book. Milan, 1981, pp. 52-53.

(12) SPAEMANN, R. "Einsprüche". Johannes Verlag. Einsideln, 1977, p. 81.

(13) VICENTE, J. DE. "Carácter práctico del knowledge moral". yearbook Filosófico, 13 (2), 101-128, 1980.

(14) MACINTYRE, A. "After Virtue". Duckworth. Liverpool, 1981.

(15) CAFARRA, C. "Viventi in Cristo". Jaca Book. Milan, 1981, pp 84-86.

(16) SPAEMANN, R. "Wer hat wofür Verantwortung". Herder-Korrespondenz, p. 405, 1982.