Expanding On Teilhard’s View of Morality – Part 2
Today’s Post
Last week took a second look at Teilhard’s five insights into the religious concept of morality, focusing on the first two. As we saw, putting the idea of morality into the context of evolution brought new depths of meaning into religion’s traditional understanding of morality as proscriptions for stabilizing society and qualifying us for ‘the next life’.
This week we will continue further on this subject, reviewing the last three of his insights for their potential to ‘construct the noosphere’ even as in turn we are ‘constructed’ by it.
Teilhard’s Last Three Insights on Morality
As we saw last week, the first two of these insights from his book, “Human Energy” addressed morality from the perspective of its role in human evolution and showed how the basis of morality is a building block for the noosphere, as well as an articulation which
“guide(s) (us) so effectively in the direction of (our) anticipated fulfillments that the ‘quantity of personality’ still diffuse in humanity may be released in fullness and security.”
To Teilhard, the essential function of religion is as a tool for unlocking our potential as entities of evolution to continue the evolutionary ‘complexification’ of the universe as we ourselves become more complete.
His last three insights extend the first two into an understanding of how morals can help us ‘release’ our “quantity of personality…in fullness and security”.
The Morality of Balance (appropriate to a static universe) vs the Morality of Movement (appropriate to an evolving universe)
“The morality of balance is replaced by the morality of movement.
– (As an example) The morality of money based on exchange and fairness vs the goodness of riches only if they work for the benefit of the spirit.”
A secular example of such a shift in perspective can be seen in the examples of human evolution in human affairs today, as enumerated by Norberg. One of the facets that he identifies is a distinct correlation between the rise of human welfare in developing countries and their increase of GNP. This is a concrete example of Teilhard’s insight into the potential of secular wealth to improve human welfare as a metric of human evolution. Norberg echoes Teilhard’s belief that ‘the morality of money’ can evolve from seeing donated money as a measure of morality (charity) to understanding the application of personal freedom and improved relationships as necessary for a society to increase its wealth (GNP) and as a result, increase the welfare of its citizens.
– “Individual morality to prevent him from doing harm vs working with the forces of growth to free his autonomy and personality (person-ness) to the uttermost.”
This is a direct corollary of the above insight, and reinforces his claim that morality must evolve from proscription to prescription if it is to fulfill its potential in fostering our personal evolution towards more completeness (autonomy and person-ness). In Teilhard’s new insight, morality must now be recognized as a tool for increasing personal freedom and enhancing relationships, not as a hedge against evil.
Religion, Morality and Complexification
“By definition, his religion, if true, can have no other effect than to perfect the humanity in him.”
Here Teilhard is delving into the most fundamental role of religion. As technology certainly can be seen to improve human welfare, it has no expertise at improving the human unique characteristics of personal freedom and personal relationships which are necessary to insure the innovation and invention at the basis of its expertise. He goes on to say,
“At the first stage, Christianity may well have seemed to exclude the humanitarian aspirations of the modern world. At the second stage its duty was to correct, assimilate and preserve them.”
The most appropriate role for religion Is as a tool for management of the noosphere. The deepest claim to authenticity for a religion is to be recognized as a tool for the evolutionary advancement of the human person, and through him the advancement of humanity.
Morality As A Basis For Dealing With The Noosphere
“So as long as our conceptions of the universe remained static, the basis of duty remained extremely obscure. To account for this mysterious law (love) which weighs fundamentally on our liberty, man had recourse to all sorts of explanations, from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that of an irrational but categorical instinct.”
Here Teilhard is succinctly stating one of his basic tenets of understanding human evolution: Once put in an evolutionary context, all concepts which are pertinent to human existence begin to present themselves as aspects of the single, unified and coherent thing that they truly are.
The Tool Set
In the same way that government must establish and safeguard the building blocks of society, such as Jefferson seeing the person as the basis for society…
In the same way that medicine must understand physiology to diagnose illness to be able to prescribe treatment…
In the same way that technology must understand metal structure to build a bridge…
Religion must recognize its role as a tool for understanding the noosphere to be able to assist us in living it in such a way that we maximize our potential for being fully and authentically human.
The Next Post
This week we took a second look at the last three of Teilhard’s insights into the concept of morality, seeing how he extended his understanding in the first two (the evolutionary context) to the last three (how it is a tool for continuing our evolution as humans).
Next week we will begin to look at what has to happen to religion if it is to begin to realize its potential as ‘co-creator’ of the future with science.