The Fall and the Ascent of Man by Fitzpatrick Joseph;

Author:Fitzpatrick, Joseph;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4526103
Publisher: UPA

St Augustine himself gives eloquent testimony to the same central human characteristic in his much quoted comment at the beginning of his Confessions: “You have made us for Yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”5

A THOMISTIC COMMENTARY

That God is not simply an object of longing alongside other objects, but the object of longing because men and women are utterly incomplete, utterly deprived and in their inmost being quite derelict without union with God stems directly from Man’s graduation to the status of a rational being, from the human acquisition of mind. Modern Thomism helps us to understand why this is so.6 For Thomism sees human consciousness as oriented in various ways. Consciousness is not simply amorphously “there,” but is structured, shaped and pointed. First, it points to the truth: we are all of us as humans oriented to the truth, we aspire to know the truth and we cannot not seek to know the truth. Any denial of such an orientation of human consciousness ends up in contradiction: for such a denial is presumably intended to be taken as true and hence creates a contradiction between the denial and the performance of the denier. Human beings continually ask questions, and behind every question lies the search for truth. Just as some military weapons are heat-seeking weapons, so the human animal is a truth-seeking animal. Evolutionary biologists who wish to understand the phenomenon of religion should dwell on this remarkable characteristic of humankind, which remarkably is rarely remarked upon.

Furthermore, human consciousness points to the morally right; we are not consciously neutral between right and wrong but are spontaneously oriented to what is morally right. This orientation of consciousness actually precedes our orientation to the truth since to seek the truth is simply the cognitional sub-division of the search for what is right. In English and most other European languages, words like “true” and “honest” cover behaviour as well as what is said. So it is that we are not only required to provide proof or evidence to support our truth claims but we are also expected to give reasons to justify our actions: some actions are rational or reasonable while others are not. Among adult human beings, actions that cannot be justified or supported by reasons are considered either stupid or irresponsible. There is in fact a close link between the truth and right action: in South Africa a “truth commission” was set up to find out what happened under apartheid on the understanding that without the truth being known justice could not be achieved. The same point is established by the fact that dictators and tyrants tell the most egregious lies in order to cover up their abuse of human rights. In fact, human beings have to lie to themselves before they can do wrong: they have to pretend that what they are doing is for this or that reason perfectly right; my wrongdoing is preceded by my lying to myself.

So it is not just

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