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LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY
Column in religion section of Providence Journal, April 21, 2001
In 1960 Love and Responsibility was published in Poland. This
densely philosophical book came out of discussions between married
couples and a their priest friend, Fr. Karol Wojtyla. Given the intense
conflicts over the meaning of sexuality, marriage, and life in the last
forty years, this book prophetically answers the questions which were
only just beginning to be asked when it was written.
Fr. Wojtyla draws a sharp contrast between the Christian moral
norm and the Utilitarian ethic which now dominates our media driven
culture.
According to Fr. Wojtyla, the Christian norm "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself", contains the corollary: You may not use persons
as objects. Fr. Wojtyla, also a philosopher, expanded this to: Whenever
a person is the object of your activity, remember that you may not treat
that person as only the means to an end, as an instrument, but must allow
for the fact that he or she, too, has, or at least should have, distinct
person ends.
This norm applies to everyone, for according to Fr. Wojtyla,
... we must never treat a person as the means to an end. This principle has
universal validity. Nobody can use a person as a means toward an end,
no human being, nor yet God the Creator.
This norm is the basis of human rights: "Anyone who treats a
person as a means to an end does violence to the very essence of the
other, to what constitutes its natural right.
In contrast, according to Fr. Wojtyla, "Utilitarians regard the
principle of maximization of pleasure accompanied by the minimization
of pain as the primary rule of human morality." and regard pleasure as an
end in itself.
While this may seem attractive, by making pleasure in itself the
sole or greatest good, other values including the value of the person are
subordinated. Persons are inevitably reduced to objects to be used to
maximize the pleasure of others. Utilitarianism does offer a "semblance
of altruism," but Fr. Wojtyla explains how this fiction leads inevitable to
disrespect:
If, while regarding pleasure as the only good, I also try to
obtain the maximum pleasure for some else -- and not just for myself, which
would be blatant egoism -- then I put a value on the pleasure of this
other person only in so far as it gives pleasure to me : it gives me
pleasure, that someone else is experiencing pleasure. If however, I cease
to experience pleasure, or it does not tally with my 'calculus of
happiness' -- (a term often used by utilitarian) then the pleasure of the
other person ceases to be my obligation, a good for me and may even
become something bad. I shall then -- true to the principles of
utilitarianism -- seek to eliminate the other person's pleasure because no
pleasure for me is any longer bound up with it -- or at any rate the other
person's pleasure will become a matter of indifference to me and I shall
not concern myself with it."
"'Love' in this utilitarian conception is a union of egoism, which
can hold together only on condition that they confront each other with
nothing unpleasant, nothing to conflict with their mutual pleasure.
Therefore love so understood is self-evidently merely a pretense which
has to be careful cultivated to keep the underlying reality hidden: the
reality of egoism and the greediest kind of egoism at that, exploiting
another person to obtain for itself its own 'maximum pleasure'. In such
circumstances the other person is and remains only a means to an end...
Utilitarianism, in spite of its promises, necessarily creates
unhappiness. On the other hand, Fr. Wojtyla's shows how living
according to the Christian norm necessarily leads to a union of persons
which is the only proper foundation for true love and joy.
Fr. Wojtyla foresaw all the battles which now divide our culture. However, he probably did not foresee that as Pope John Paul II it would be his task to defend this truth in every corner of the world.
The Editor thanks Dale O'Leary for sending this in to Dad's Den
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