philosophy
THE SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE
Jean Curthoys
Raimond Gaita
A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice
Test Publishing $24.95pb, 293pp,
1 875847 790
RAIMOND GAITA IS A professional philosopher who doesn't do philosophy like a professional. This doesn't mean that he is not up to it -- indeed, in his first book, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, he made a significant mark on the profession with precisely the argument that it does not have the resources for serious moral reflection. The deepening of moral understanding, Gaita thinks, comes from what he calls 'lucid reflection' on our inner lives which, unlike what ordinarily counts as self knowledge, cannot leave a way of life undisturbed. This is Socrates' way of doing philosophy in which truthfulness of account (of ourselves) is inseparable from moral response so that knowing what evil is means we can no longer do it. Essentially bound up with the way we live, moral philosophy of this kind cannot be a matter of expertise.
It is natural, then, that in A Common Humanity Gaita should develop the argument of Good and Evil for the 'educated public', taking up such contemporary issues as the Stolen Children, the nature of genocide, the Holocaust and the responsibility of intellectuals. (The educated public is likely to be receptive for it has been deeply affected by Gaita's award winning Romulus: My Father in which it will now be able to identify the biographical source of much of his philosophy.)
For Plato's Socrates the idea of an understanding which is, itself, virtue is paradoxical. An impressive achievement in A Common Humanity is that this deep, but notoriously elusive, notion is thoroughly elucidated. So, too, are important but obscure ideas of twentieth century philosophy, such as those of Martin Buber and Wittgenstein and, by implication, those of Levinas and the critical thrust of postmodernism. This clarity results not only from Gaita's talent for making difficult ideas accessible. It stems mainly from an enlargement of Socrates' philosophy which provides the necessary conceptual resources for his explications. The enlargement comes with the argument that it is love, in a sense in which religious traditions have understood it but the ancient Greeks did not, which is fundamental to our self understanding. This conception of love, though, is developed within a secular philosophy where, Gaita argues, it more properly belongs. This philosophy for the educated public is philosophy at its most profound.
In fact, the argument extends beyond trying to show that a quasi-religious notion of love should be central to moral philosophy. Several essays suggest how it might also transform political thought and, indeed, all our thinking about 'the human condition' where humans are understood not in the light of biology but in that of our 'inner lives'.
Now the sincerely religious might be amenable to including so much of our intellectual life within the scope of a love which illuminates everything. It is a tougher task to bring such a thought to the wider educated public. Gaita does so by operating at two connected levels. In the Wittgensteinian manner of 'showing' through examples, he tries to make his thought 'lucid' -- the kind of 'really' seeing that restructures our moral responses. It is here that the discussion of contemporary issues (especially those of the nature of the racism involved in the Stolen Children, and of the moral rot within our universities) has its effect. As well, he presents a worked-out philosophical account of what it is to be human, although I am not sure that he, himself, would describe it that way.
The latter argument, I think, is approximately as follows. The love of Gaita's reflections is one that recognises 'the unique preciousness of all individuals' or, in religious language, the sacredness of human life. Unlike everyday love, which reveals only the preciousness and the uniqueness of the few who are its object, this saintly love admits of no exceptions and no degree. But it is its special connection with truth which enables us to understand the nature of lucidity and why, when it illuminates this unconditional love, our thinking about the human condition is transformed.
This special connection lies in the experience of this love which contains within it the certainty of its own truth. Seeing someone in its light we cannot doubt that they are uniquely precious in just the way that everyone else is. So understood our 'common humanity' is not something inferred on the basis of shared properties -- it is directly revealed. This revelation, however, is not only of the immeasurable value of human life but also of the fact that we are constituted in relation to others by this recognition. (The latter, crucial, aspect is made clearer in remorse which discloses this preciousness in our violation of it. The pain in remorse shows that the preciousness of others lies deeply in our souls.) As an insight into the very make-up of our inner life, this understanding of our common preciousness is itself 'lucid', it must impact on the way we live. As the point of entry into its own realm of understanding, it is fundamentally involved in all serious moral thinking.
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Until recently Jean Curthoys taught philosophy at Sydney University. She is the author of Feminist Amnesia (Routledge, 1997)