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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
‘God is dead’ can mean many things. It can mean that the way God has been thought of is no longer adequate, or that there is no God and never has been, or that human consciousness of God has receded.1 Our concern in what follows begins with ‘the death of God’ in this last sense, in the specific sense of the death of an awareness of God or of an affective consciousness of God. Or rather, this is where half of our concern begins. The other half begins with a phenomenon which is the mirror image of the death of God:the death of persons. By ‘the death of persons’ I mean something analogous to the sense specified for ‘the death of God.’ I mean the death or at least the decline of a consciousness of the inherent worth of persons, of the worth persons have as persons. In Kantian terms the death of persons is the loss of a consciousness of persons as ends in themselves. The death of God and the death of persons are parallel, and, furthermore, they are connected. The connection is not difficult to see, particularly if we remind ourselves of what Nietzsche said about the death of God.
page 263 note 1 Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton, two ‘radical’ or ‘death of God’ theologians, in the preface to their book Radical Theology and the Death of God outline some ten ways ‘the death of God’ can be understood. Radical Theology and the Death of God (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1966), pp. x–xi.Google Scholar
page 263 note 2 Cf. Roth, John K., Problems of the Philosophy of Religion (Toronto: Chandler Publishing Company, 1971), p. 161Google Scholar. The most pertinent chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra is the third chapter of Part 2, entitled in one translation ‘The Pitiful’ and in another ‘On the Pitying’, and see also Pt. 4, chap. 6. The pertinent section of The Gay Science is the aphorism entitled ‘The Madman’.
page 264 note 1 Walter Kaufmann calls this motive ‘resentiment’. It is discussed in Kaufmann's, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (fourth edition; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 371 ff.Google Scholar
page 264 note 2 See sec. 260 of Beyond Good and Evil and, for example, Pt. I, the Prologue, sec. 9 and Pt. I, chap. 8 of Thus Spake Zarathustra.
page 266 note 1 The Groundwork of the Met aphysic of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J.Google Scholar in Paton's, H. J.The Moral Law (third edition; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1956), p. 91.Google Scholar
page 266 note 2 Actually, as Kant has put his principle, it extends to all human persons. Paton observes in a footnote that, strictly, the formulation should be in terms of ‘rational nature as such’, and not in terms of ‘humanity’. Kant formulated thc practical imperative in this way, Paton suggests, because the only persons we are acquainted with are human. Others, however, would say that the apparently broader phrase ‘rational nature as such’ is too narrow – for it eliminates part of humanity, particularly if it is construed as ‘rational will capable of morality’. We shall discuss this point later on.
page 266 note 3 In The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals Kant formulated various principles of the moral law. The categorical imperative and the practical imperative are two.
page 266 note 4 As William K. Frankena points out, if the categorical imperative is assumed to define only duties, it would appear to make tying your left shoestring first a moral duty. But this is ludicrous. Frankena suggests that what Kant meant by the categorical imperative was threefold: (i) it is permissible to act on a maxim if, and only if, you can will it to be a universal law; (ii) it is wrong to act on a maxim if, and only if, you cannot so will it; and (iii) it is a duty to act on a maxim if, and only if, you cannot so will its opposite. Also, as Frankena observes, there are problems with how ‘can will’ is to be understood. See Frankena, William K., Ethics (second edition; Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 32.Google Scholar
page 267 note 1 For a development of this point see Atwell's, John E. ‘Are Kant's First Two Moral Principles Equivalent?’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, VII (1969).Google Scholar
page 268 note 1 This observation has been made more than once. It was recently made by Brook, J. A. in ‘How to Treat Persons as Persons’, Philosophy and Personal Relations, ed. Montefiore, Alan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 69.Google Scholar
page 269 note 1 Strawson, P. F., ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, ed. Strawson, P. F. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 79.Google Scholar
page 269 note 2 Devotion XVII.Google Scholar
page 270 note 1 Royce, Josiah, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1968), pp. 155 and 157.Google Scholar
page 270 note 2 See Royce, , The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 156–62.Google Scholar
page 271 note 1 See Paton, , The Moral Law, pp. 96–7.Google Scholar
page 271 note 2 Although for Kant, rationality may be a necessary and not a sufficient condition for morality. Obligation, Kant, says, can ‘have no reference to a holy being’Google Scholar, that is, a being whose will is absolutely good. See Paton, , The Moral Law, p. 101.Google Scholar
page 271 note 3 Maclagan, W. G., ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle. I’ Philosophy, xxxv (1960), 199–200Google Scholar. Maclagan's article is published in two parts in the July and October issues of vol. xxxv.
page 271 note 4 This, of course, is not to deny that the person with a corrupt will deserves punishment or, alternatively, requires treatment, or that the psychotic should be committed to an institution for his protection and the protection of others. It is, rather, to affirm that any proper disposition of their cases will respect their intrinsic worth as persons.
page 272 note 1 Brook, , ‘How to Treat Persons as Persons’. p. 71.Google Scholar
page 274 note 1 For Kant, the ends principle, or practical imperative, and the categorical imperative arc expressions of the same moral law. Accordingly, for Kant, the awareness of the absolute value of persons that informs the practical imperative should inform the categorical imperative and the duties it generates.
page 274 note 2 Royce, , The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 155.Google Scholar
page 274 note 3 We should be clear, though, that the recognition of the inherent worth of persons is not sufficient to generate all of morality. For instance, it is not, in itself, sufficient to resolve problems relating to the tension between the prima facie claims of justice and mercy, nor does it, in itself, give us a means of resolving conflicts between specific prima facie obligations. Again, this recognition does not explain why it is morally wrong to be cruel to animals. Although the explanation may be near to hand. While animals arc not persons, they are sentient beings and in this respect like persons. Perhaps we are clear that it is wrong to be cruel to animals, to make them suffer, because we are so clear that it is wrong to make persons, like ourselves, suffer and animals are in the important respect like ourselves. Our morality in respect to our obligations towards animals is what it is, it could be argued, precisely because animals are like persons to the extent they are. If so, it would be a mistake to consider animals to be persons. This explains why we would judge as sympathetic, but morally insensitive, a nineteenth-century abolitionist who felt only the same pity for a slave who was being beaten that he felt for a horse that was being beaten.
page 274 note 4 Morris, Herbert, ‘Shared Guilt’, Wisdom: Twele Essays, ed. Bambrough, R. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974).Google Scholar
page 274 note 5 See The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, Constance (New York: The Modern Library, nd.), p. 301Google Scholar. (The Magarshack translation is slightly different.) Cf. what Father Zossima himself says in the first chapter of Book Four.
page 275 note 1 Morris, , ‘Shared Guilt’, p. 261.Google Scholar
page 275 note 2 Morris, , ‘Shared Guilt’, p. 262.Google Scholar
page 276 note 1 Maclagan, , ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle. I’, p. 208.Google Scholar
page 276 note 2 Drawing upon the distinction that Cardinal Newman made in A Grammar of Assent, perhaps we should say that without the affective and conative element at most a notional assent to the worth of persons is made, and not a real assent.
page 277 note 1 Cf. Nakhnikian, George on what he calls ‘undemanding love’ in his ‘Love in Human Reason’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, III (1978), 304–5.Google Scholar
page 278 note 1 Camus, Albert, The Rebel, trans. Bower, Anthony (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1956), p. 25.Google Scholar
page 278 note 2 Norman Malcolm seems to think so. See his ‘Is it a Religious Belief that “God exists”?’ Faith and the Philosophers, ed. Hick, John (New York: St. Martins Press, 1964), PP. 106–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also cf. Phillips, D. Z., ‘Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding’, Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar
page 280 note 1 Royce, , The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 155.Google Scholar
page 280 note 2 Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception (Studies in Philosophical Psychology, ed. Holland, R. F.. New York: Humanities Press, 1969), pp. 28 and 67Google Scholar. Emphasis deleted.
page 280 note 3 Drengson, Alan, ‘Critical Notice: Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, III (1974), 482.Google Scholar
page 281 note 1 Rorty, Amelie O., ‘Belief and Self-Deception’, Inquiry, xv (1972), 395.Google Scholar
page 281 note 2 John, of Ruysbroeck, The Book of Supreme TruthGoogle Scholar, chaps. v and vI.
page 281 note 3 John, St of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. and ed. Peers, E. Allison (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image Books, 1959), p. 59.Google Scholar
page 282 note 1 Why then, it might be asked, do we not always find a well developed God-consciousness with a well developed person-consciousness? And why is it that historically as human beings have become more aware of the worth of persons there has been a dying of the sense of God's presence? To the first question there may be no general answer. It is a fact, however, that though a person should discover that he is deceiving himself regarding one matter, he may still fail to discover that he is deceiving himself regarding a related matter – even though the cause of the self-deception is the same in the two cases, for instance his vanity.
The second question raises a more serious issue for the thesis that what prevents one discovery prevents the other. For, it would seem, even though one discovery might not lead to the other, still making one should not lead to a strengthened denial of the other. But is the presupposition of the question correct? Have we become more aware of the worth of persons in the age of the death of God? Or have we simply become more consistent in the application of social justice as a matter of principle?