Summary
Introduction
1 Ethical Paradigm of Early Christianity
2 Paradigm pointed out by Vatican II
3 Intersubjectivity Paradigm
4 Paradigm for a new epochal change
Final considerations
Introduction
Talking about paradigms means referring to principles that guide thoughts and actions or to models or standards that are established to indicate a possible set of concrete responses or solutions to questions or problems that arise at a particular historical moment.
The concept of paradigm is, indeed, strongly associated with the world of science and with the names of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, and their attempts to understand how scientific knowledge works. Kuhn indicated that paradigms are “universally recognized scientific achievements that for some time provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners of a science” (KUHN, 1991, p.13). Thus, paradigms arise from agreement on certain viewpoints and configure themselves as a conceptual framework that enables the formulation of a particular theory that responds to questions posed.
Ethics, recognized as a science that investigates acts, attitudes, customs, and values of human beings, here thought in the light of theology, has also been guided by paradigms or models of thought that have established themselves throughout the history of Western Christianity.
The proposal here is to point out the paradigms that have guided and still guide the theoretical and practical construction of theological ethics in the past and present, and to verify the contemporary crisis of these paradigms which, in some way, point to paths not yet uncovered. For this reason, a brief passage through the history of theological ethics will be necessary, even knowing that telling this history is not the main motivation of this text and that another entry may do so more appropriately.
Thus, we will point out the paradigms that marked some specific times in the history of humanity in Western Christianity, recalling that each paradigm is a model of thought that, in turn, raises different ways, methods, and systems of doing moral theology in each context, generating attitudes and perspectives that marked theological ethics and the lives of Christians.
1 Ethical Paradigm of Early Christianity
The first paradigm to be remembered is the ethical paradigm of early Christianity, which was born with the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God made Man. However, it is important to remember that Jesus, being Jewish, was born in a specific time and culture, already established, with values, norms, and customs enshrined. We have, in the Holy Scriptures, the Old or First Testament, with texts that narrate the beginning of the History of Salvation that coincides with the history of the Jewish people. What interests us here is to affirm, from this revealed text, that the Jewish ethos was anchored in an ethics founded on the “paradigm of the Law”: the law of Sinai, received by Moses, the so-called ten commandments, which were expanded to numerous other laws, placed with the intention of interpreting and detailing what needed to be observed and fulfilled by the people of the Covenant. Jesus, as a good Jew, does not deny the law of Moses, but updates and expands it, paradoxically simplifying it. He reduces the ten commandments and the 613 laws described in the Pentateuch to two, which ultimately boil down to one: the law of love. Thus, from Judaism to Jesus, one can think of a first change in ethical paradigm. This change, from the paradigm of the Law to the “paradigm of Love,” is very important for understanding what happened afterward.
Right at the beginning of Christianity, when there were still no consistent theoretical formulations and human action was guided by oral tradition, which translated and interpreted the teachings of Jesus, the ethics that governed the first Christian communities contemplated the attitudes that most closely approached the words and actions of the Master Jesus. The paradigm of Love underpinned the Christian ethos.
However, already in the first century, writings began to appear, which were later called the New or Second Testament, in the composition of the Holy Scriptures. These writings, which bring the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Letters, sent to Christian communities by Paul and other apostles, are considered as Revelation and, for this reason, foundational and paradigmatic for all ethics that claim to be Christian. Bernhard Häring speaks of a “Paradigm of Creative Fidelity” in the apostolic Church, exemplified by events described especially in the Acts of the Apostles, when the disciples of Jesus were called to solve conflicts arising from cultural differences among those who adhered to the Christian faith. Some creative ruptures that challenged the established Church at that moment placed the apostles in fidelity to Jesus and his evangelical proposal (HÄRING, 1979, p. 36).
However, other texts emerged between the 1st and 4th centuries. Among them, the Didachê, the so-called apocryphal gospels, and the homilies and writings of the Church Fathers stand out. All these writings contained practical teachings that indicated how Christians should be and act. It can be said that the paradigm, the model, or foundation, in this context, was also that of creative fidelity to Jesus and the values of the Kingdom he announced, although there was already beginning to appear here, some influence of the Hellenic world in the elaboration of texts dedicated to the exhortation of Christians.
Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were fundamental for a synthesis between Christianity and Greek philosophy and for the introduction of a new paradigm that sustained theological ethics. Saint Augustine, of the 4th century, considered the greatest thinker of early Christian Latin antiquity, has his writings strongly marked by the synthesis made from the encounter of Christianity with Platonism. Saint Thomas Aquinas, already in the 13th century, uses Aristotelian categories in the exposition of his theology.
The theologian José Roque Junges (2004) proposes a reflection on the paradigms of thought that can help think about their impact on the formulation of ethical paradigms. According to him, the history of Western thought can be seen and studied from three paradigms: the “paradigm of being,” the “paradigm of consciousness,” and the “paradigm of language.” Each of these paradigms presents itself as a referential framework, a logic that governs reflection and life, corresponding to an ethical discourse.
Following his reflection, it can be understood that the “Paradigm of Being,” also considered as the “paradigm of nature,” is the one that was present in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and that has metaphysics as its background science. Its “basic objective is the explanation of the being of all things” and, for this, it seeks an approach to the nature of things. This paradigm has the pretension, in fact, of “capturing what is permanent in the passing appearance of reality and making clear what the explanatory principle or the essence that supports the existence of things is” (JUNGES, 2004, p. 11).
Early Christian antiquity, as is well known, was strongly influenced by the Platonic paradigm, which can be considered idealistic or essentialist, as it bets on a world where ideas exist in themselves and for themselves and are considered universal, eternal, and immutable realities. These ideas support, as a model, the existence of things in the sensible world, of which the human being partakes. The Christian ethics, which is outlined under this paradigm, especially from the writings of Saint Augustine, notoriously Platonic, is an idealist ethics, which despises the real world, is dualistic, as it considers the human being fractured under the optics of the opposition/exclusion between body and soul, and is pessimistic in relation to this human being and his history, because in the participation of the sensible world he is only an imperfect copy of what he should be and therefore cannot achieve the good he aims for.
In the medieval world, especially in the scholastic context, the influence is of Aristotle. The Aristotelian paradigm is empiricist and realist, as it is based on the reality of the inhabited world. Thomas Aquinas takes up Aristotelianism, which presents natural law as that which defines the human being, who, in his essence, is a rational being. Thus, right reason is dedicated to discovering and explicating the inclinations of human nature, which tends to seek happiness. This happiness can only be found in the practice of good action, which only occurs if the action is virtuous. Thus, “morality, in this paradigm, is essentially a morality of contents that lead to happiness and are discovered by right reason, explicated in the ethos and interiorized by virtue” (JUNGES, 2004, p. 11).
Marciano Vidal, in his attempt to reconstruct and classify the models of theological ethics, speaks of four epochs, thought from some nerve points that, according to him, provide a basis for the construction of moral models. These are: patristics, the medieval period, configured mainly by penitential praxis, the Thomist renaissance, and casuistry, this last stage already present in modern times, starting at the Council of Trent and ending at Vatican II (VIDAL, 1986, p. 99).
With Junges it is possible to affirm that the traditional paradigm, here presented as the “Paradigm of Being,” does not respond to the new challenges brought by the modern subject, marked by the historical perspective, and that its assumptions obeyed a way of thinking that was outdated and incomprehensible to the men and women of the time in which it arose.
In the same direction, Marciano Vidal speaks of “insufficient foundations of Christian ethics,” which generated “incorrect forms of moral experience” (VIDAL, 1986, p. 179). He presents in two groups the models he calls incorrect or insufficient, with which Christian ethics was formulated and lived: models based on heteronomy and models based on normative human nature.
Vidal describes the ethical models based on heteronomy as follows: they are moral models based on “prohibition,” on taboo (magical-taboo foundation); on myth (with a mythic-ritualistic foundation); on “extrinsic obligation” (of voluntarist character, which highlights two forms mediating morality: nominalist voluntarism and casuistry); on the “established” (foundation in sociological positivism) and on “utility” (utilitarian foundation).
Still according to Vidal, the ethical models based on “normative human nature” are those of abstract-ontological character, based on the idea of “natural law,” and those of physical-biological inspiration, based on the idea of “natural order” (VIDAL, 1986, p. 180-197).
Bernhard Häring also points to the insufficiency of this “traditional” paradigm. According to him, a moral theology of this type (of legalistic tendency and oriented to case solving in the confessional), which ended up producing moral systems such as tutiorism, rigorism, probabiliorism, probabilism, and laxism, “could no longer favor the examples of discipleship, of that justice that comes from God’s justifying action and the response of love to his call, so that the person becomes more and more the image and likeness of his own mercy” (HÄRING, 1979, p. 50-51).
It can be said then, that there is a certain consensus among moral theologians that the metaphysical paradigm no longer responded to the questions brought by modernity and that a new paradigm that would sustain Christian ethics needed to be found.
2 Paradigm pointed out by Vatican II
Returning to Junges, let’s verify the second paradigm of moral thought proposed by his reading of the “Conscience or the Subject.” This paradigm is established in function of the epochal change that ends up separating the previous time from a new time, called by authors as Modernity. In this time, the anthropocentric turn brought the subject to the center of all reflections and the elaboration of the understanding of the world and values. No longer God, nor the cosmos, but the human being, is now considered the main player of a world to be ordered, manipulated, and constructed.
Thus, “the critique of knowledge takes the place of metaphysics as the master science. The only true knowledge acceptable by critique is that acquired by the method of science,” which, not by chance, is made by the thinking subject (JUNGES, 2004, p. 12).
Modernity, therefore, meant the overcoming of the paradigm of heteronomy and the determination of nature and brought the introduction of the social contract, based not on a universal law, but on the “law constituted by the general will.” The law, thus, is no longer the result of a heteronomous imposition, but of the autonomous acceptance of consciences that think and decide on their own. The moral action considered good is that which corresponds to the positive evaluation of autonomous consciences that decided it so. According to Junges, we are facing an “ethics of autonomous conscience as a basis for the obligatoriness of the law” (JUNGES, 2004, p. 12).
In the Catholic realm, Vatican II was the main responsible for the introduction of this way of being and thinking in ethical reflection. It understands the epochal change that leads to modernity and places listening to the “signs of the times” as an essential method for doing theology and living faith. Thus, from the observation of new times and customs, theological ethics needed to be rethought, away from metaphysical assumptions, legalism, juridicism, rigorism, and casuistry.
It is important to remember that, even before the Council, the intuitions that were expressed in it were already present and affirmed by great theologians. As an example, we can mention the Jesuit theologians who, according to Häring, “perceived, with great perspicacity, that an overly large number of laws and sanctions suffocated the freedom and creativity of the faithful.” Also, Saint Alphonsus Liguori, continues the great moral theologian of the Council period, in bringing equiprobabilism as an alternative to previous moral systems, pointed to the following:
when a righteous conscience has an equal or almost equal amount of good reasons for the creative use of freedom, aiming at present needs, it is not bound by the law that, in itself or in its concrete application, is doubtful (HÄRING, 1979, p. 53).
These and other intuitions, presented in the 19th and early 20th centuries, associated with civilizational changes, gave the Council the basis for its reflections and proposals. In this sense, the conciliar recommendation of “returning to the sources,” was an appeal for theological ethics to have as its main foundation the Holy Scripture and not the Law. This so that Christians could reveal to the world and in the world their adherence to Jesus Christ and his proposal for the establishment of the Kingdom of love. In the Decree Optatam Totius, from the Council, this recommendation can be found:
Special care should be taken to improve moral theology, whose scientific exposition, more nourished by the Holy Scripture, should reveal the greatness of the vocation of the faithful in Christ and their obligation to bear fruit in charity for the life of the world (OT 16, our emphasis).
The importance of science and the strength of the autonomy of the thinking subject were also recognized, making Christian ethics assume, as a theological place, the individual conscience and the reciprocity of consciences. The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, also from the Council, brings a fundamental paragraph for the understanding of this paradigm. In the retrieval of a small excerpt, its importance and reach can be perceived:
[…] Conscience is the most secret center and the sanctuary of man, where he is alone with God, whose voice resonates in the intimacy of his being. Thanks to conscience, that law which is fulfilled in the love of God and neighbor is revealed in a wonderful way. By fidelity to the voice of conscience, Christians are united with other men, in the duty of seeking the truth and of solving so many moral problems that arise in individual and social life […] (GS 16).
The Council thus provokes a self-critical examination of the guiding principles of theological ethics and makes some shifts: from a “static to a dynamic perspective, from theory to practice, from law to conscience” (ORDUÑA; ASPITARTE; BASTERRA, 1980, p. 91). According to these authors, what is verified is a “reconversion to Christ, as an entitative principle, to Holy Scripture, as a primary principle of knowledge, and to Charity, as an operative principle of moral conduct.”
Bernhard Häring, a conciliar priest, had a great influence on the reflections that took place around Vatican II and proposes, in this context, for theological ethics, the “Biblical-Christian personalist paradigm”. This paradigm has the characteristic of bringing to the center of ethical reflection the person of Jesus Christ, God and man. As well expressed by Häring, taking up Bonhoeffer, “the starting point for Christian ethics is not the reality of our own being, nor is it the reality of standards and values. It is the reality of God, as he revealed himself in Jesus Christ” (HÄRING, 1979, p. 62). Jesus is the prototype of what we should be, of the response we should give to God who calls us to life. His words and actions should guide the action of each person in the space they inhabit and the time they live. Thus, for this paradigm, anthropocentrism revolves around Jesus of Nazareth, the exemplary man, the revelation of humanity in fullness.
It is also important to remember that the personalist paradigm of the 20th century had its inspiration in Thomas Aquinas, who has an important reflection on the notion of person. As he conceives human nature as rational and affirms that each individual is a person, his thought allows considering the human being as a being created in the image and likeness of God, ethical and free, who can distinguish between good and evil and decide the course of their life.
Thus, the personalism proposed by Häring brings to the fore four indispensable words: freedom, fidelity, responsibility, and creativity.
From these words, the author proposes some important passages that occurred in this paradigm shift, such as: from election as prestige to the call to be a sign; from idolatry to fidelity to the truth; from the slavery of norms to the freedom of the Law of love; from blind obedience to creative responsibility; from legalistic casuistry to the morality of the Covenant and the Beatitudes (MILLEN, 2005, p. 135-188).
Many doctoral theses have been written and many works have been written based on the thought of Häring, who worked exhaustively so that this new ethical paradigm, attentive to the needs of the new times and, at the same time, attentive to the most original Christian roots, could be implemented.
Despite bringing a necessary and fruitful change, the personalist paradigm, which gave rise to the so-called Renewed Morality, was considered, by some theologians, as insufficient (VIDAL, 1986, p. 200). Roque Junges prefers to speak of gaps and not of insufficiencies. According to him, the Renewed Morality, founded on a personalist ethics,
presents a naive and simplistic vision of modern society, not paying attention to conflict and injustice, not taking into account the complexity of the current reality. It is characterized, equally, by an optimistic conception of the world, forgetting the reality of evil and sin and being unaware of the cultural dynamics that move social and political processes […] it fails to capture the complexity of contextualized human action. […] It starts from a human being outside his sociocultural context. It does not have a social perspective that thinks based on the marginalized majorities. The ears are not open to the cry of the poor that becomes ever more deafening. Therefore, it fails to capture the complexity of contextualized human action (JUNGES, 2005, p. 21).
Due to these criticisms and the pointing out of gaps and insufficiencies, other ways of doing theology, other theological currents, such as the Theology of the People and the Theology of Liberation, generated in Latin America, Feminist Theology and gender issues, Ecoteology, among others, have emerged in some contexts, especially where inequalities and injustices produced poverty and ethically unacceptable suffering. These theological models bring a methodology based on see, judge, and act, which greatly helps in understanding the ethos of peoples and the dynamics of life that sustain social and political projects. Thus, they influenced ethical reflection and the morality to be lived, but, for reasons to be revisited, they were not well understood by some and in some contexts even rejected. It can be said that they are also fruits of conciliar reflection, more subliminal, less publicized and lived, and that they fit into the third paradigm of theological ethics in the Catholic world, called by Roque Junges as the “of Language or Intersubjectivity.”
3 Intersubjectivity Paradigm
This paradigm introduces the intersubjective perspective and therefore breaks with the anthropocentric and individualistic tendency of the previous paradigm. Language, as a means of expression of our experiences, becomes a basic mechanism for establishing interpersonal relationships. Thus, communication through language, based on subjects who reflect, becomes the axis on which thought is constructed. Jürgen Habermas is one of the authors who corroborate this paradigm. He brings a Discourse Ethics, whose axis is the Theory of Communicative Action. This theory proposes that values be chosen and truth be sought from a rational intersubjective logic that works with the assumption that there are rationally validatable norms (HABERMAS, 2012). “Truth then becomes, therefore, the result of a consensus built by the communication community where everyone has a priori access to speech” (JUNGES, 2005, p. 13). In this context, consensuses, which can be minimal or even provisional, are sought and accepted and are presented as necessary for life.
One must also not forget here the contribution of Lévinas, who brings to reflection the question of alterity. His thought is organized around a dialogic ethics, which opposes the purely personalist paradigm, which is monological, self-centered. For Lévinas, when the other is perceived as Alterity, he becomes the source of great life experiences and a genuine basis for ethics. Thus, ethics, in the horizon of alterity, is no longer thought in terms of the protagonism of the thinking subject, but of his relationship with another, with a face that calls, that asks for a response (LEVINAS, 2008).
Despite the importance and timeliness of this paradigm, which brings intersubjectivity to the center, what can be perceived is that contemporaneity lives a unique moment, marked by a crisis of meaning that is prompting another epochal change. This change is in full realization, not yet concluded and provisionally named by some as post-modernity or late modernity. We are in the midst of a civilizational crisis. The transformations observed in the last sixty years correspond to a true revolution of knowledge and its applicability, with unprecedented perspectives still to be implemented.
Today, among others, a crisis of reason affects science, the conception of knowledge and the world. The realization of the complexity of all things required work based on specializations that, by reduction, separated to know better and, therefore, brought a simplifying view of reality and a dilution of the whole. The vision of the whole became rarefied, and the relationships that occur between the different elements that make up reality became obscured. Thus, the fragility of fragmented thought, distrust regarding established systems, fatigue, apathy, disillusionment, and the feeling of non-belonging and impotence in the face of life are widespread feelings that now shape a new ethos, which demands a new ethic.
Contemporaneity has been described by many authors through metaphors and expressions that portray the lived experience. Among others, we have that of the “liquid world” (BAUMAN, 2001), “society of tiredness” (HAN, 2017), “world of post-truth,” of the “post-human.” These metaphors and expressions suggest the need for new paradigms to think about life and act. Perhaps what can do justice to this still incomprehensible time is the “Paradigm of Complexity,” brought by Edgar Morin. The challenges of this model of thought are well explained in his book Science with Conscience (MORIN, 2005) and synthesized by Roque Junges (JUNGES, 2005, p. 22-23).
This paradigm places the human being in front of a plural world, not understandable through a single axis of thought. It places him in front of the unpredictable, the path that must be made while walking and not that given beforehand; it places him in front of himself and his impotence and vulnerability; it places him in front of the realization of an interconnected, interlinked world, and therefore, perhaps this is the paradigm that Theological Ethics should assume.
4 Paradigm for a new epochal change
Proposing a new ethical paradigm in such a complex time is not an easy task, but some contributions may be useful so that gradually we can move from this chaotic situation to a time when the complicated can be harmonized and life can be presented more auspiciously.
Following Junges,
The current complexity of the sociocultural context and the actions of individuals demand a new paradigm of understanding of theological ethics itself, if the Christian message is to continue to have some incidence in the daily lives of people and in social reality. The paradigm of complexity organizes knowledge in new molds more suitable for understanding complex situations, fruits of multivaried inter/retrorelations. It helps to overcome a Manichean vision that does not know how to take into account this variety of elements and dimensions, encompassing disorder in order, imbalance in balance. Theological ethics needs an epistemological shock (JUNGES, 2005, p. 27).
This epistemological shock can help in revisiting the novelty of Christianity itself, which, distorted by mistaken interpretations and by undue additions, served and still serves to justify ethical models that can no longer answer today’s questions.
Thus, proposing an ethical paradigm for this complex and changing time is necessary and the “Paradigm of Care” can be a plausible bet. This paradigm, explained by Leonardo Boff in the book Know how to care. Ethics of the human – compassion for the earth, allows the apprehension of the complexity of the human being, as a living being in relation with all other created beings. It also allows the recognition of the complexity of human action, taking into account the existential circumstances and the connection between everything that exists, and allows the construction of an ethical path that contemplates the return to the Law of love, proposed at the beginning by Jesus of Nazareth. The paradigm of care brings as an axis the tender and careful co-responsibility for the life of all and for all life that exists, in the dynamics of paraclesis, which is founded on the Spirit that cares, consoles, sustains, inspires, and leads us to hope.
In a world disintegrated and disoriented by numerous wars and polarizations, by indifference that wounds, by competition that excludes the other, by the depredation of the house that is common to all and that constitutes the only possibility of survival for the human species and for all creation, more than ever co-responsible solidarity and universal fraternity are urgent. Thus, Christian ethics no longer configures itself as that which must guarantee certain behaviors dictated by rules set from always, but as that capable of seeking the experience of love, reinvented and recreated anew, every time. It is love that enables the feeling of universal fraternity, proposed by Francis of Assisi and by Francis of Rome.
Pope Francis says:
Fratelli tutti: wrote Saint Francis of Assisi, addressing his brothers and sisters to propose a way of life with a taste of the Gospel. From these counsels, I want to highlight the invitation to a love that transcends the barriers of geography and space; in it he declares happy the one who loves the other, “his brother, as much when he is far away as when he is close to him.” With a few simple words, he explained the essence of an open fraternity, which allows recognizing, valuing, and loving all people regardless of their physical proximity, the point on Earth where each one was born or lives (FT 1).
Love is caring, does not accept violence, and is a safe path for healing and peace. This is, therefore, a therapeutic paradigm, so necessary for a world that is sick and weak in hope, a world that goes through turbulence and generates sick and desolate people. Boff says that the category “care” is a way of being that shows how well the human being functions as such, unlike machines. And this way does not come from reason, from the structures of understanding, but from feeling, from the capacity for tenderness, compassion, empathy, dedication, communion with the different (BOFF, 1999, 2010).
Perhaps it would not be important to think now of paradigms of thought, although they have their place and have been extremely useful for guiding what has been lived up to now, but to think and assume the paradigms of the heart, paradigms that have as an axis not the logos, but the pathos, the cordial feeling that constitutes us as humans.
The “paradigm of care” enables us to look at various situations of the present time that call for fairer solutions. One of them is the urgent need to resume an ecological ethics that rescues the values necessary for the rehabilitation of the common home, of mother earth, so worn out and degraded by consumerism and boundless greed. The planet Earth is exhausted and showing signs that it can no longer support being plundered. The awareness that its resources are not infinite is still not an acquisition of everyone, so environmental education needs to be assumed to help in the growth of the consciousness of the common good, of solidarity, of the responsibility of each and everyone for everything that concerns the preservation of life on earth. Pope Francis goes further. He proposes an integral ecology, one that assumes care for everything that is fragile, one that looks at the needs of the earth, but also at those of all who inhabit it. He calls us to find solutions not only technical, rational, but those that contemplate the changes that need to happen in the human being, changes in mentality, changes in habits, changes in the logic of living. There is a need for an educational process that leads us to this. A small excerpt from his Encyclical Laudato si helps:
Environmental education has been broadening its objectives. If, at the beginning, it was very focused on scientific information and awareness and prevention of environmental risks, it now tends to include a critique of the “myths” of modernity based on instrumental reason (individualism, unlimited progress, competition, consumerism, unregulated market) and also tends to recover the different levels of ecological balance: the inner balance with oneself, the solidarity with others, the natural balance with all living beings, the spiritual balance with God. Environmental education should predispose us to make this leap to the Mystery, from which an ecological ethics receives its deepest meaning. In addition, there are educators capable of reordering pedagogical itineraries of an ecological ethics, so that they effectively help to grow in solidarity, responsibility, and care based on compassion (LS 210)
Thus it can be said that the “paradigm of care” points to this new logic, to an expanded ethics, that contemplates other subjects and allows a new way of being in the world in front of other humans, in front of nature, and in front of God, dreaming of a modified world, more welcoming and healthier.
Another situation of our time, which cannot be ignored, is the passage from the analog to the digital era, a passage still not assimilated in its positive and negative consequences. Digital technology has moved us to another universe of knowledge, which brings the “intelligent” machine to the center of reflection. This requires a rethinking of the place of the human being in the current world. Paolo Benanti tells us that the human being is not transforming, but what is changing is the way the human being sees and describes himself and that it is still necessary to establish a difference between the machine, which functions, and the human being, who exists. This is not little. He says:
We are called to ask ourselves about how to use the machine so that the human becomes increasingly human, so that the care of the neighbor, especially the last, the fragile and the weak, occurs in the best possible way and so that the good, sought with free determination, is true (BENANTI, 2000).
In the face of this horizon, we are called to recover the deep sense of existing as ethical subjects, human beings aware of good and evil and capable of choosing the good. The words that appear when ethics and the digital world come together are: human dignity, equitable justice, responsibility, transparency, inclusion, security, and solidarity. The “Paradigm of Care” can account for this task. Care for what exists in a world where what matters is what functions becomes increasingly necessary.
Final considerations
In light of the above, it is not possible to draw a conclusion. Everything is open, everything can be rethought, from a ‘culture of encounter,’ from dialogue between humans who treat each other not as partners, but as brothers, respecting differences and renouncing to understand reality in a fixist and monolithic way. The invitation remains that reflection continue, without letting the foundation of the initial proposal made by Jesus of Nazareth be lost and that the current crisis may be an opportune moment for growth and maturation in the search for paths that point to promising exits and, perhaps, other ethical paradigms that can account for new realities not yet understood and integrated. Hope cannot fade and let pessimism dominate this moment. It needs to be the mainspring that sustains us so that Christian ethics does not allow the care, which is born of love, to wither or take a back seat in a world that privileges functionality and efficacy.
Maria Inês de Castro Millen (Center for Advanced Studies, Juiz de Fora). Text submitted on 08/25/2022; approved on 10/30/2022; posted on 12/30/2022. Original in Portuguese
References
BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 2001.
BENANTI, Paolo. For a Humanistic Artificial Intelligence. Interview with Paolo Benanti. IHU, 2020. Available at: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/78-noticias/596566-paolo-benanti-the-call-of-the-pontifical-academy-for-life-for-a-humanistic-artificial-intelligence. Accessed in Jan. 2023.
BENANTI, Paolo. Welcome to the Digital Era. Interview with Paolo Benanti. IHU, 2020. Available at: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/605193-welcome-to-the-digital-era-interview-with-paolo-benanti. Accessed in Jan. 2023.
BOFF, Leonardo. Know How to Care. Ethics of the human – compassion for the earth. 2nd ed. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1999.
BOFF, Leonardo. Care for the Earth, Protect Life. How to avoid the end of the world. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2010.
VATICAN COUNCIL II. Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes. On the Church in the modern world. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed in May. 2022.
VATICAN COUNCIL II. Decree Optatam Totius. On priestly formation. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651028_optatam-totius_en.html. Accessed in May. 2022
FRANCIS, Pope. Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti. On fraternity and social friendship. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html. Accessed in Jun. 2022.
FRANCIS, Pope. Encyclical Letter Laudato si’. Praise be to you. On care for our common home. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. Accessed in Jan. 23.
HABERMAS, Jürgen. Theory of Communicative Action: Rationality of action and rationalization of society. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2012.
HAERING, Bernhard. Free and Faithful in Christ. Moral theology for priests and laypeople. General moral theology. v. 1. São Paulo: EP, 1984.
HAN, Byung-Chul. Society of Tiredness. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017.
JUNGES. J, R. Recent transformations and future prospects for theological ethics. In: IHU Theology public notebooks n. 007. 2005. Available at: https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/images/stories/cadernos/teopublica/007cadernosteologiapublica.pdf Accessed in Apr. 2022.
KUHN, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 5th ed. São Paulo: Perspective, 1998.
LÉVINAS, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Lisbon: Editions 70, 2008
MILLEN, M. I. C. The chords of a symphony. The dialogue morality in the theology of Bernhard Häring. Juiz de Fora: Editar, 2005.
MORIN, Edgar. Science with Conscience. 8th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brazil, 2005.
ORDUÑA, R. Ricon; BARTRES, G. Mora; AZPITARTE, E. Lopes. Christian Praxis 1. Fundamental morality. 2nd ed, São Paulo: EP, 1983.
VIDAL, Marciano. Morality of Attitudes I. Fundamental morality. 2nd ed. Aparecida-SP: Sanctuary, 1986.