The Global Bioethics of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights [1 ed.] 9781527557178, 9781527550315

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The Global Bioethics of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights

The Global Bioethics of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights By

Dominique J. Monlezun

The Global Bioethics of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights By Dominique J. Monlezun This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by Dominique J. Monlezun All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5031-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5031-5

We do not know, neither the Sophists [Philosophers], nor the Orators [Politicians], nor the Artists, nor I, what is the true, the good, and the beautiful: But there is this difference between us that, although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something. Whereas I, if I know nothing, at least am not in any doubt about it. So that the whole superiority in wisdom which the Oracle attributes to me reduces to nothing more than that I am fully convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.” —Socrates (399 B.C.), Apology of Socrates (21b-22e) Paraphrased by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Two Discourses

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................. viii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................. ix Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 1 Introduction Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 15 The Social Contract and Human Rights Chapter 3 ................................................................................................ 109 Anthropological, Evolutionary Biological, and Political Economic Challenges to Human Rights Chapter 4 ................................................................................................ 208 Thomistic Personalism and Human Rights Chapter 5 ................................................................................................ 281 Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights Bibliography ........................................................................................... 302

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book demands recognition of the team who made it possible, as though it carries my name, I carry within me all those who make this journey possible. A special gratitude to my patients whose suffering drives my research forward. To my mentor and colleague, Dr. Alberto Garcia, whose perpetual kindness and wisdom profoundly influenced this work amid his busy global commitments to his academic post while leading the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights. To the faculty, staff, and students of Italy’s Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum for their hospitality, expertise, and continued presence. For my parents, Dr. Tina and Dominique Monlezun, who inspired in me the moral urgency to care for one’s community. To Christian and Suzanne, who daily teach me in their unique paths how to do so. To my Peters family, who show that love endures. To Dr. Shane Courtland, who challenged me to find the reasons, and Fr. Neal McDermott and the Dominicans of the United States Southern Province who in their Wednesday dinners and debates helped me wrestle with those reasons giving way to wisdom. To Dr. Charles Monlezun, who taught me that “not a day without writing” first begins with not a day without prioritizing the people for whom you write. And most crucially, to the ones without whom I could not pick up a pen—Susan, Lucy, André, and Our Lady of Wisdom—who show me that love takes up where reason leaves off. My telos begins and ends with you.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

A.D. AI B.C. C.f. CV EU HGP Ibid. I.e. IMF ISIL GNR UK UN UDHR UDBHR UNESCO UDHGHR USA WB WTO WWI WWII

Anno Domini Artificial intelligence Before Christ conferatur (‘refer to’) cardiovascular European Union Human Genome Project Ibidem (‘in the same place’) id est (‘in other words’) International Monetary Fund Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics United Kingdom United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights The United States of America World Bank World Trade Organization World War I World War II

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

[Ulysses:] And I and my companions were already old and slow, when we approached the narrows where Hercules set up his boundary stones that men might heed and never reach beyond; upon my right, I had gone past Seville, and on the left, already passed Ceuta. ‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘o you, who having crossed a hundred thousand dangers, reach the west, to this brief waking-time that still is left unto your senses, you must not deny experience of that which lies beyond the sun, and of the world that is unpeopled. Consider well the seed that gave you birth: you were not made to live your lives as brutes, but to be followers of worth and knowledge (26.6-120).1

1.1 Background The masterpiece of Dante (1265-1321 A.D.), The Divine Comedy, depicts Ulysses as the legendary hero of Homer’s Odyssey in the eighth ring of hell, drawing on the oldest surviving Western literary hero from the Odyssey and Iliad (8th century B.C.).2 There the great Trojan War hero recounts his final voyage past the Pillars of Hercules on either end of the Strait of Gibraltar, exhorting his men to “reach beyond” into the unknown, into the mysterious and powerful Atlantic Ocean separated from the Mediterranean by the Pillars. This famed structure was engraved per Renaissance legend with the phase Non plus ultra (“Nothing further beyond”). Laboring for five months out in the unchartered ocean, the great Greek adventurer and his companions

1

DANTE, The inferno, trans. Robert Hollander (New York, NY: Random House, 2002). 2 VIDAL-NAQUET, Pierre, Le monde d’Homère (‘The world of Homer’) (Perrin, 2002).

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glimpsed “a mountain shape, darkened / by distance, that arose to endless heights. / I had never seen another mountain like it” (The Inferno, XXVI.133-5). To cross from the unknowable to the knowable of this ‘Mountain of Purgatory’ was for no human until they traversed from her/his mortal life to the afterlife—and thus a great storm arose, sinking their ship. Out in those seemingly impenetrable waters, lay the additional shadowy grave of Atlantis according to Plato (~429-347 B.C.), Western civilization’s leading philosophical figure and religious pioneer whose legacy was revived and preserved by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.). In Plato’s The Republic standing as one of the world’s landmark works of political philosophy, the Father of the School of Athens pitted his ideal state of Athens victorious against Atlantis, the former utopian conqueror of the known world who reached also for the unknown (Timaeus and Critias dialogues).3 This fabled empire—wise, rich, and powerful—according to Plato was located just outside the Pillars and served as a bridge to the rest of the unexplored world. But it inevitably succumbed to greed and warhungry ambition that led the Atlanteans to their ultimate defeat at the hand of the Athenians shortly before a catastrophic earthquake claimed the now lost island nation. New Atlantis from Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626 A.D.) and Utopia from St. Thomas More (1478-1535 A.D.) later attempted to raise the Atlantis allegory from its watery slumber. But it would take another 500 years before another figure would take a shot at the elusively slippery dream of a lasting utopia. On June 26, 1945, just 48 days after Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces in World War II (WWII), 50 member nations of the victorious Allies-driven United Nations (UN) signed its Charter near the San Francisco shores to usher in a modern utopia, resolutely facing the still warring Japan across the Pacific Ocean. Four months and two atomic bombs over that island nation later, the UN Charter took effect with the end of the deadliest war in humanity’s history. An estimated 50-85 million civilian and military casualties and fundamental shift in world power caused the world to pause in that tense but hopeful California convention room on June 26th. The 50 nations desperately sought with Ulyssean conviction to peer beyond the supposedly unattainable unknown, into a future of a united East and West as true “followers of worth and knowledge,” a global community of true peace.

3

WELLIVER, Warman, Character, plot and thought in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias, vol. 32 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Archive, 1977).

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1.2. Introduction In the wake of the humanity-altering WWII and the subsequent historic UN united global peace effort, this book explores the next great frontier: the genomic engineering and nanotechnology revolutions accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI). A shocked Allied force bloodily struggled during the war against Axis Germany’s totalitarian dictator, Adolf Hitler (18891945 A.D.), and his Endlösung der Judenfrage (German: ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’) that systematically utilized genocide to attempt total extermination of the Jewish people in German-occupied territories. Yet from the non-ethical, purely technical standpoint of the genetic engineering revolution, the Final Solution from Hitler’s perspective would be inefficient and primitive: why staff myriads of work-death camps when he could selfdestruct them by inactivating their DNA replication by the flip of a switch? And then genetically engineer in utero his Master Race at the embryonic level of development with manipulations guided through nanotechnology delivery systems for optimal precision? But since they are so valuable, why send them to the front lines? Instead AI-driven mechanized weapons could patrol their borders and order their economic, political, and cultural lives for lifelong adherence to the totalitarian dogma. Such sobering possibilities which seemed like science fiction in 1945, today are becoming scientific realities: Liang et al. of China (one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) published their application of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering on 85 patients at the embryonic level (killing or genetically marring all of them). Further, the Pentagon of the United States of America (USA) listed $12-15 billion in its 2017 budget request for AI-based advancements to outpace Russia and China, drawing from a 2015 Bank of America and Merrill Lynch study concluding that intelligent machines will redefine the next industrial revolution, along with nearly half of manufacturing by 2025 being done by robots.4 The $12 billion includes autonomous weapons and robots able to identify and engage enemy targets on the battlefield. The Pentagon budget surge in AI is concurrent with similar deep Chinese investments, and the recent comments from Russian Chief of the General Staff that he envisions in the “near future” a robotic unit “capable of independently conducting military operations.”5 According 4

ARLEBRINK, Jan, “The moral roots of prenatal diagnosis. Ethical aspects of the early introduction and presentation of prenatal diagnosis in Sweden,” Journal of Medical Ethics 23, no. 4 (August 1997): 260. 5 “Remarks by Defense Deputy Secretary Robert Work” (Inaugural National Security Forum, Center for New American Security, 2015), http://www.cnas.org/transcripts/work-remarks-national-security-forum#.VoRZn-

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to Noel Sharkey (1948-present), University of Sheffield Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, weaponized AI already is in existence with the British Taranis (autonomous fighter jet),6 the South Korean sentry robot SGR-1 (patrolling the North and South Korean border, armed with machine guns able to detect and kill intruders without human control), and the Russian Uran-9 tank.7 Against this historical backdrop, Stephen Hawking (1942-2018 A.D.) along with a prominent team of scientists recently warned that creating AI would be the largest—but potentially last—event in human history: One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, outinventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.8

1.3. Purpose The purpose of this book is to translate the Ulyssean project of ‘reach[ing] beyond’ into the unknown: further and faster than the technological pioneers in these epoch-shaping revolutions, clearer and crisper revitalizing the philosophical foundation of the UN-established body of international law. The Atomic Age (ushered in on July 16, 1945, with the USA detonation of the first atomic bomb, Trinity) signaled the beginning of the age of the continual threat of global destruction. But genomic engineering powered by AI and executed via nanotechnology is emerging as a more fundamental challenge to the human condition by approaching the capacity to 8rJo4. 6 CARTWRIGHT, Jon, “Rise of the robots and the future of war,” The Guardian, November 21, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/nov/21/military-robots-autonomousmachines. 7 WRIGHT, Bruce, “Russia’s new weapons of war: Robots to take over for soldiers? Moscow eyes defense sales with new autonomous fleet,” International Business Times, March 6, 2017, http://www.ibtimes.com/russias-new-weapons-war-robotstake-over-soldiers-moscow-eyes-defense-sales-new-2502851. 8 HAWKING, Stephen, “Stephen Hawking: ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence - but are we taking AI seriously enough?,’” The Independent, May 1, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephenhawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-arewe-taking-9313474.html.

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permanently damage or destroy the human genome, halting humanity’s hunt to stave the seemingly inevitable Atlantean-like quest for increased power through nuclear and next generation warfare. This work begins where a poem by John Donne left off. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that produced Trinity, quoted Donne upon the mammoth detonation: As West and East In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, So death doth touch the Resurrection.9

As the Trojan War hero, Ulysses, ventured out with his naval technology into the unknown to meet the eternal God in the form of an angel guarding the limits of the knowable, Oppenheimer set out into the New Mexico desert to witness the blazing inferno of Trinity’s maiden voyage. Shortly afterwards, he was reported to invoke the words of the Hindu Scriptures, The Bhagavad Gita (Sanskrit: ĐúęȜıćĭ [Gita]):10 “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (Chapter 11, Verse 12).11 Gita within the Prasthanatrayi (Sanskrit: Ů̾ĈĭċũĒı) serves in Hindu philosophy as one of its three canonical texts in which the manifestation of God (Vishnu) in His incarnate form, Krishna (Sanskrit: øĴˁ), serves as the charioteer for the warrior Prince Arjuna (Devanagari: æÿIJŊċ), counseling him before a major battle on life lessons and the admonishment to seek universal perfection of life. In that passage, Vishnu calls upon the hesitant Arjuna to do his duty by attacking his enemies, explaining they will be reincarnated and that they “have already been destroyed by Me. You are only an instrument, O Arjuna” (Chapter 11, Verse 33). This book analyzes the real choices in AI-driven genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics (AI-GNR) including its very real cataclysmic potential, making possible an ethical analysis of them and hopefully their defensible and safe application for preventing such global destruction.

9

DONNE, John, “Hymn to God, My God, in my sickness,” in Poems of John Donne, ed. E. K. Chambers, vol. 1, 1896, 211–12. 10 JHIJIYA, James A., “The ‘Gita’ of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144, no. 2 (2000): 123–67. 11 BRODBECK, Simon, The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics), trans. Juan Mascaro, Kindle (Penguin, 2003).

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1.4. Summary of book The primary material objects of this book are the human actions in the 21st century’s converging scientific revolutions of AI-GNR. The formal object is the bioethics paradigm articulated by the United Nations (UN) in its 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR), derivative from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) with a unique human rights-duties focus, as articulated in its foundation by Thomistic(-Aristotelian) personalism and actualized in the UN’s social contract framework of rights-duties.

1.5. Significance and innovation AI is considered by world-leading scientists and its early pioneers as humanity’s greatest technical achievement whose unprecedented foreseeable future potential provides it the plausible capacity to extinguish every human life.12,13,14,15 And its practical applications in the other leading revolutions of genetic engineering and nanotechnology thus make AI-GNR the “most powerful 21st-century technologies”16 which “are threatening to make humans an endangered specifies.”17 Unlike the 20th century discovery of the atomic bomb precipitating the Cold War nuclear arms race, AI-GNR is exponentially more difficult to control let alone guide its ethical development. It is by its nature a decentralized technological intersection requiring drastically less resources and collective expertise. Renegade states are concerning yet containable, as the last 60 years of international diplomacy through the UN-led nuclear disarmament and peace-keeping endeavors have demonstrated. But AI-GNR is at the community and 12

CELLAN-JONES, Rory, “Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind,” BBC Technology, December 2, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540. 13 BARRAT, James, Our final invention: Artificial intelligence and the end of the human era (London, UK: Macmillan, 2013). 14 JOY, Bill, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” Wired, April 1, 2000, https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/. 15 KURZWEIL, Ray, The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2006). 16 JOY, Bill, “Why the future doesn’t need us”; Kurzweil, The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology; BROWN, John Seely, DUGUID, Paul, “A response to Bill Joy and the doom-and-gloom technofuturists,” in AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2001, ed. Albert H. Teich et al. (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2001). 17 JOY, Bill, “Why the future doesn’t need us.”

Introduction

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individual level and nearly can travel globally and nearly instantaneously via the internet once its electronic trigger is hit, and like the recent years of bloody lone wolf terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Arabic: ζϋ΍Ω, ISIL) demonstrate, it is much more difficult to detect its dangerous application by small groups of individuals, and even more so prevent. This book therefore provides the first known comprehensive bioethical analysis of AI-GNR, by applying the UDBHR paradigm to it with an innovative Thomistic personalism interpretation, defended philosophically and historically dating back to the UN’s seminal ethical standard in the 1948 UDHR using the primary source materials.

1.6. Summary of content The UN has created and nourished historical political unity following the seemingly apocalyptic global conflict of WWII and ensuing nuclear arms race, built on its philosophical consensus dating back to the 1948 UDHR articulating an international affirmation of human rights and duties. It was the unified efforts of the world’s nations at the UN level which oversaw the prevention of global conflict between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, the transition of power during post-WWII decolonization, and the coordination of some of humanity’s greatest and most politically and logistically complex successes as the Human Genome Project via its subsidiary, the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).18 For such revolutionary, decentralized, and volatile scientific developments as AI-GNR, the largest politically and philosophically embodied consensus is required, thus making the UN with its defense of human rights-duties in its fullest bioethical formulation in the UDBHR particularly suitable for analyzing AI-GNR and producing substance-based recommendations which can be internationally actionable. Yet to be philosophically defensible and thus politically effective, this book must introduce an additional innovative element: an interpretative refinement of the UDBHR through Thomistic personalism as championed by Karol Wojtyla (1920-2005 A.D.). This book provides the first known comprehensive philosophical and historical critique of the social contract influences on the UN notably in the UDHR, the basis for international human rights law and all subsequent UN conventions and declarations, 18

VIZZINI, Casimiro, “The Human Variome Project: Global coordination in data sharing,” Science & Diplomacy 4, no. 1 (March 2015), http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/files/the_human_variome_project_science__dipl omacy.pdf.

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including the chief bioethical formulation in the UDBHR—concurrent with its natural law roots which made it possible. Through the dominant presence of the victorious WWII modern liberal states, particularly the US and United Kingdom (UK), the social contract tradition profoundly shaped the UN reliance on this Enlightenment tradition down to its current operations which this book tracks through the last 6 decades. After acknowledging the debt the global current peace and the UN success owes to this tradition, this book then pivots to examine its philosophical weaknesses including logical contradictions (as evidenced by its political applications in the years leading up to WWII and following) which ultimately doom it as a sustainable philosophical foundation for global peace and an adequately rigorous bioethical paradigm. This work therefore features a historical examination of how the Thomistic natural law tradition was built into the foundation of the UN via the UDHR, principally through the drafting committee “[i]intellectually dominated” by Charles Malik (Arabic: ϚϟΎϣ ϝέΎη, 1906-1987 A.D.) and Peng-chun Chang (1892-1957 A.D.).19 Natural law orientated toward the common good was the common ground for the Confucian Chang and Thomistic-Aristotelian Malik which allowed them to unite the pluralistic belief systems represented by the committee drafters and member nation delegates. Confucian scholars from Tung Chung-shu (195-115 B.C.) who introduced Confucianism as China’s state religion and political philosophy down to the WWII Chinese ambassador to the US, Hu Shih (Chinese: ⬌㐺, 1891-1962 A.D.), produced a comprehensive defense of lei or ‘Law of God’ which converges on the Western conception of natural law articulated by Aquinas in continuation of Aristotle.20 And this convergence was developed further by Malik and Chang to philosophically ground in natural law (derivative from the divine law and guiding the resultant positive law) the politically expedient framework of the social contract articulating what would become international human rights law.

19

MORSINK, Johannes, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, drafting, and intent (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 20 BONEVAC, Daniel, PHILLIPS, Stephens, Introduction to world philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009); CHOU, Chih-P’ing, “The natural law in the Chinese tradition,” in English Writings of Hu Shih, China Academic Library (Berlin, Germany: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013), 217–34; CONFUCIUS, The analects, trans. David Hinton (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999 {222 B.C.}).

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This brings us to the final phase of this last innovative element tracing the social contract and natural law trends up to the UDBHR to ultimately make it effective in its application for AI-GNR. Yet the UDBHR is predicated upon a central logical contradiction—its Drafting Group claimed one of its key achievements was to “unite these two streams” of bioethics, the one “present since the ancient times” and the “other, conceptualized in more recent times,” with the former drawing “from reflections on medical practice” and the latter from “international human rights law.”21 These global experts recognized the fundamental distinction in bioethics between the classical natural law and modern social contract (typically treated as mutually exclusive). Further, the social contract has been critiqued as a vacuous ethics system due to its rejection of metaphysics and a universally shared standard such as natural law that can resolve the incommensurable subjective assertions or preferences into which it otherwise collapses under metaphysical scrutiny. The UDBHR therefore by its own admission is necessarily committing itself to logical indefensibility if it seeks to justify its principles by both streams or solely by the social contract tradition. This book details the historical and philosophical evidence of the social contract’s failure as a defensible system based on logical fallacies and inaccurate anthropology (with insights from evolutionary biology and political economics). Therefore, Wojtylan Thomistic personalism is utilized to accomplish what the UDBHR or its preceding UDHR (which omitted clear defense of its principles) cannot do on their own: salvage key insights from the social contract formulation of international human rights and anchor them in a defensible philosophical system. This book argues that such a system can achieve this defensibility through a solid metaphysics foundation and resultant natural law ethics with its most comprehensive justification via Thomism, made intelligible to the social contract stream via Wojtyla’s unique personalism without sacrificing the contract’s emphasis on rights and pluralism. But is not Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism simply a paradigm permanently foreign to the interior structure of modernity and the UN? Is it not an unwelcomed imposition of a tradition unintelligible to the UN and thus politically doomed to rejection? This book disagrees. It seeks to innovatively demonstrate the historical and philosophical continuum from Malik to Wojtyla and the historical evidence for Wojtyla’s legacy reflected 21

DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference” ({United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization}, 2005), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001428/142825e.pdf#page=80.

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in the UN (particularly its 2005 UDBHR following his 1995 UN address) to justify the conclusions the UN wishes (i.e. rights) by first logically walking back through sound premises to a defensible natural law and ultimate metaphysical foundation (i.e. Thomistic personalism). To achieve the above, this book examines Thomism with its metaphysics, natural law, and associated virtue ethics as interpreted by its modern proponent, Jacques Maritain (1882-1973 A.D.), particularly in his philosophical defense of the UDHR in his July 1948 introduction to the official UNESCO collection of expert philosophers’ arguments which paved the way for the December 1948 ratification of the Declaration.22 This book then proceeds to a critical examination of his thought—including his 1948 assertion about the “irreconcilable divisions” between natural law and modernity’s social contract tradition (page 72)—before moving on to the later Thomist Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-present). From MacIntyre’s argument about the Enlightenment failure to his modern approach defending natural law, the book then arrives at an examination of the thought of Wojtyla, who unlike both Maritain and MacIntyre believed a bridge was possible between natural law (particularly Thomism) and the social contract. Specifically this book will provide the first known comprehensive analysis of his 1995 UN address demonstrating how it is a novel substantive defense of natural law but explicitly articulated in the social contract language of modernity and the UN via his unique Thomistic personalism. This brings us to the final part of this book’s argument by analyzing how the UDBHR ten years after Wojtyla’s address incorporated his distinctive concepts including a common “moral sense,” virtue ethics, solidarity as operative duties of the state and individuals, the transcendent spiritual dimension of the person, and pluralism constrained by the objective good of human rights23 as innovations to the social contract. This book concludes by demonstrating how the inclusion of these concepts evidences a subtle personalist retrieval of natural law within the UDBHR while also underscoring the critical philosophical importance for using Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism (to understand the interior logical structure and thus philosophical and political strengths of the UN rights-based social contract) 22 UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION, “Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations” (United Nations, July 1948). 23 WOJTYLA Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization,” L’Osservatore Romano 41 (1995): 8–10; DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.”

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that can then be applied to AI-GNR.

1.7. Objectives This book has the following objectives: Ɣ Demonstrate the philosophical strengths and weaknesses of the liberal social contract and natural law traditions as represented in the UDHBR/UDHR. Ɣ Demonstrate the anthropological aspects (particularly evolutionary biological and political economic) relevant for a politically and philosophically defensible global bioethics paradigm in the above. Ɣ Demonstrate the evolution of Thomist natural law from Malik to Maritain and MacIntyre to Wojtyla, the latest who completes it with his distinctive personalism applied to human rights. Ɣ Apply Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalist interpretation of UDHR to AI-GNR based on its real-world state-of-the-art examples.

1.8. Outline Ɣ Chapter 1: Introduction Ɣ Chapter 2: The social contract & human rights Ɣ Chapter 3: Anthropological, evolutionary biological, & political economic challenges to human rights Ɣ Chapter 4: Thomistic personalism & human rights Ɣ Chapter 5: Artificial intelligence & human rights

1.9. Methodology Bioethics at its heart is a multi-disciplinary and pluralistic endeavor, uniting and applying the intellectual and experiential elements of human life to realword scenarios. This book respects that process by supplementing the philosophical examination (of the dominant social contract and less known natural law paradigms within the UDBHR) with analyses of the historical, anthropological, evolutionary biological, political economic, and interreligious theology that provide the concrete context for AI-GNR so this work can provide a comprehensive defense of politically effective and philosophically defensible bioethical conclusions on appropriate AI-GNR (in its development and application) that is intelligible to our modern pluralistic world.

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Yet since defensible philosophy (with sound metaphysical foundation producing premises logically following to justifiable conclusions) is unintelligible to modern man largely, we will have to take the long way around to investigate what is true and untrue in modern philosophy— beginning with Rawls and going back through the lens of Wojtyla, MacIntyre, and Maritain to see where philosophy may have gone wrong with Nietzsche, Kant, Rousseau, and ultimately Descartes—to thus reclaim a defensible philosophy demonstrating objective truth (but articulated in terms of experiential and existential subjective truths the modern person can understand within the small geo-centric or human-centric cosmic prison she has been confined since the 17th century Enlightenment began. The above is not to demonize modern philosophers who err intellectually in earnest, but to honor their work and significant contributions to humanity by correcting their errors and finishing what they began. As the Greek playwright, Sophocles (497-406 B.C.), noted in the tragic Antigone: “to err is human” (Latin: errare humanum est) but “when an error is made, that man is no longer unwise or unblessed who heals the evil into which he has fallen…Concede the claim of the dead” (lines 1025-1030).24 G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936 A.D.) in his opening line of The Everlasting Man described this long way to the truth, this arduous philosophical and psychological task of conceding such claims that have resulted in so much death: “There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place” (page 1).25 The Nobel laureate poet, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965 A.D.), in The Little Gidding provides the most poignant picture of the adventure on which we are embarking. His work (composed during the Nazi air-raids of WWII Britain as a multicultural work blending Dante, Shakespeare, Christian theology, and Buddhist images, seeking to understand the inseparable unity of humanity’s past, present, and future, along with the unity of the person and her undying desire to find meaning to one’s life through arriving at truth in its fullness) poetically sough the same: Ash on an old man's sleeve Is all the ash the burnt roses leave. …A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

24 SOPHOCLES, Antigone, ed. Sir Richard Jebb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891). 25 CHESTERTON, G.K., The everlasting man (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2011).

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Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England. With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate… Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.26

If you are not already, this work likely will not sell you on this unique Thomistic personalist refinement of the United Nations’ social contract view of human rights-duties, to shift from overlapping consensus to converging consensus. This work is meant not to be definitively convincing for all (at least for those open to critically examine the philosophical soundness of the argument) but rather subversive. It is meant to inspire enough distrust in our modern philosophical convictions that you (and I) begin to seek convincing conclusions, to approach true wisdom as Socrates (470-399 B.C.) confessed in the face of death that we are “ignorant of what [we] do not know.” And maybe, just maybe, this book is meant to propose a compelling way out of this ignorance with a reliable guide to wisdom (if not a decisive road map)—at the very least it is meant to be a sign pointing you and me in the right direction. Please forgive me in advance, for this argument sometimes may feel like it meanders as a river making its way sometimes even inexplicably to the sea. This is because it is meant to meet the wandering modern person where she 26 ELIOT, T.S., Collected poems, 1909-1962, 1st edition (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1963).

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is logically and existentially and to pick up as many diverse peoples on the journey as we go (whether the departure points of philosophy or politics or anthropology or theology or literature speak to them). And sometimes I may get temporarily lost in the beauty and love of where we are going, so we may have to pause to hear the water rushing past us. Like the early philosophers (‘Philosopher’ in Ancient Greek: ijȚȜȩıȠijȠȢ, ‘philosophos’ or ‘lover of wisdom’), I am a man quite in love with the most beautiful discovery I have ever encountered—here in these pages, I hurriedly dash to you, grabbing someone, anyone to witness what I have seen in the true, the good, and the beautiful as I seek to truly understand the object of my study. So amid my exuberant haste, please force us to slow down when I go too rapidly or pause when the argument guiding us onward does not make sense with the way too obtuse to continue without further examination. But let me at least companion with you by setting sail in the right direction toward this wisdom. And please allow space for shared rational discourse between you and I, free from the current ‘cultural wars’ in which conflicting camps are expected to yell past each other politically but achieving nothing philosophically or personally. If ‘liberal’ is used in this work, it is because it is respectfully referring to the Enlightenment project of political liberalism labelled such by its theorists. This work therefore will critically assess ideas and theories (not attack the idealists and theorists who developed them), so we may advance together toward peace within and between us. I through this book invite you on this journey to ‘arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time,’ to face the unknown together, to finally come back to our humanity and peer into ‘the crowned knot of fire’ atop our shared ontological mountain home where the truth as a loving unyielding fire within us illuminates as it purifies, uniting us as a global human family in a peace that does not die.

CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND HUMAN RIGHTS

[Socrates]...there will be no end to the troubles of states or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself till philosophers become rulers in this world or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands...there is no other road to real happiness either for society or for the individual (473d).27

2.1. Background To better understand philosophy’s trajectory to the modern day, let us first analyze briefly political history which has exerted enormous influence on deciding which philosophies live and die (for as the grim proverb goes, philosophy often like history is written by the victors). As unfortunately, history has written prolifically in the blood of untold human lives including the assassinated WWII veteran and civil rights activist, Medgar Evers (1925-1963 A.D.): “You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.”28 And thus our violent human history has been marked by the antithesis of Socrates’ dream as power and ideas have fought each other in an ongoing hand-to-hand combat like heat and glaciers, carving our human landscape in the wake of this perennial battle to understand what it mean to be human and thus live together as a human family.

2.1.1. A Brief History of Politics For the sake of brevity and focusing on this work’s main argument, we will restrict our examination on political history on the empires of most 27 PLATO, The republic of Plato: Second Edition, ed. and trans. Allan Bloom, 2 edition (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1991). 28 BERGMARK, Martha, “Remembering Medgar Evers – and carrying on his fight for civil rights,” The Guardian, June 12, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/medgar-evers-civilrights.

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relevance to the modern political philosophy of the UN. Beginning in Africa and the Middle East, human beings organized themselves into increasingly complex societal structures from small tribes to larger chiefdoms and eventually into empires with the predynastic Egyptian and dynastic Sumer empires around 3,000 B.C. (page xiii).29 The Indus Valley Civilization was formed 500 years later in what is today Afghanistan and Pakistan (page 56).30 Then in 336 B.C., Alexander the Great (Greek: ਝȜȑȟĮȞįȡȠȢ ੒ ȂȑȖĮȢ, 356-323 B.C.) expanded his Greek kingdom of Macedon from Greece to India, humanity’s largest empire up to that period. Shortly before that period, the Roman Republic (Latin: Res publica Romana, 50-27 B.C.) gradually expanded from the Roman Kingdom (Latin: RƝgnum RǀmƗnum, 753-509 B.C.) based in Rome to eventually conquer the entire Mediterranean region in present-day Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, North Africa, Spain, France, and southern Britain until the famed Roman general, Julius Caesar (Classical Latin: Juli҂s Kae֒ sar, 100-44 B.C.) took control of the Republic by military force and declared himself perpetual dictator until his assassination in 44 B.C. (page 102). 31,32 His adopted heir, Octavianus (63-14 B.C.), defeated other possible successors until he was declared Augustus (Classical Latin: Awљ҂st҂s) and the first emperor of what would become the Roman Empire (Latin: Imperium RǀmƗnum) (page 50).33 During the ensuing two centuries of the Pax Romana (Latin: ‘Roman Peace’) begun under Augustus, the historic period of tranquility stretching through the largest empire up to that point with 50-90 million residents34 or 1 in 5 residents in the world.35 It would remain the most populated western political regime until the mid-1800s36 covering nearly all of Europe, the 29 DANIEL, Glyn, The first civilizations: The archaeology of their origins (New York, NY: Phoenix Press, 2003 (1968)). 30 HYSLOP, Steve, DANIELS, and Patricia S Almanac of world history (Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2006). 31 Lawrence Keppie, ed., “The approach of civil war,” in The making of the Roman army: From republic to empire (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). 32 TUCKER, Spencer, Battles that changed history: An encyclopedia of world conflict (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010). 33 ECK, Werner, The age of Augustus, trans. Deborah L. Schneider (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). 34 “International Programs,” UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU, May 21, 2012, https://www.census.gov/population/international/. 35 Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel, eds., The dynamics of Ancient Empires: State power from Assyria to Byzantium, Reprint edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). 36 GOLDSMITH, Raymond W, “An estimate of the size and structure of the national

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Middle East, and North Africa (page 3),37 driven by the Augustinian ideal of Roman superiority over all non-Roman barbarians, or barbarous (Latin: ‘balbus’ or ‘stammering’ as in an unintelligible language) including the Germanic, Persians, and Gauls among others:38 ‘Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento’ (Latin: ‘Roman, remember by your strength to rule the Earth's peoples’ (page 3).39 The Roman Empire later entered a new epoch with the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, 272-337 A.D.),40 followed by Emperor Theodosius I (Latin: Flavius Theodosius Augustus, 347-395 A.D.) who made Christianity the official religion of the empire (‘the Roman Catholic Church’) before splitting the empire permanently on his death into the East and West Roman Empires, ruled initially by his two sons.41 476 A.D. marked the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the loss of ancient Rome, and commencement of the Middle Ages when Emperor Romulus Augustus (461-507 A.D.) fell to the first King of Italy, the barbarous Flavius Odoacer (433-493 A.D.) (chapter XXXVI).42 In its stead, the Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Sacrum Imperium Romanum, German: Heiliges Römisches Reic, 800-1806 A.D.) stretched geographically from the Kingdoms of Germany to Italy, and politically from Catholic Pope Leo III (750-816 A.D.) crowning Frankish King Charlemagne the Emperor (742-814 A.D., page 1-8)43 until the military defeat of Emperor Francis II (1768-1835 A.D.) by Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821 A.D.) at Austerlitz (page 622).44 The Orthodox product of the early Roman Empire,” Review of Income and Wealth 30, no. 3 (September 1, 1984): 263–88. 37 KELLY, Christopher, The Roman Empire: A very short introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007). 38 LEWIS, Charlton T., SHORT, Charles, “Barbarus,” A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1879). 39 EDER, Walter, “Augustus and the power of tradition,” in The Cambridge companion to the age of Augustus (Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World), ed. Karl Galinsky (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 40 BARNES, Timothy D, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). 41 WILLIAMS, Stephen, FRIELL, Gerard, Theodosius: The empire at bay (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 42 GIBBON, Edward, The decline and fall of the Roman Empire (New York, NY: Everyman’s Library, 2010). 43 HEER, Friedrich, The Holy Roman Empire (New York, NY: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967). 44 REICH, Emil, “Abdication of Francis the Second,” in Select documents

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Christian Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire (330-1453 A.D.), which had continued to hold much of the original Roman Empire’s Mediterranean territories ultimately fell to the Muslim Ottoman Empire (Turkish: ϪϴϠϋ ΖϟϭΩ ϪϴϧΎϤΜϋ, 1299-1922 A.D.) in 1453 before it respectively was dissolved and partitioned by the UK and France following WWI.45 Amid these empire transitions in the West, nation-states and later kingdoms developed in present day UK, France, and Russia from the Roman classical antiquity period to the Middle Ages (5th-15th century A.D.) politically and culturally led by the aristocracy and Catholic and Christian clergy46 to the modern era (16th century-present) led by the middle class and democratic republics.47 Christianity, united up through the Roman Empire, split in 1054 into the Greek East and Latin West politically and the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches theologically and culturally,48 with Protestant Christianity further breaking from the Catholic Church beginning with the German-based Protestant Reformation in 1517.49 The every-changing political landscape of western Europe leading up to the modern era spilled over into the British colonies in North America, culminating in the colonial rejection of monarchical rule and subsequent formation of the US and its victory over Great Britain in the American Revolution (1775-1783 A.D).50 The American founding fathers were deeply influenced by the French-born Enlightenment, experiencing their own American Enlightenment (1714-1818 A.D.) that inspired their fight to free themselves from the medieval divine right of kings and thus have their absolute sovereign no longer be aristocracy and religion but rather a liberal social contract and human reason defining republican protection of human rights (page 128-129).51 “Thus republicanism entered our Romanic/Germanic illustrating mediæval and modern history (London, UK: P.S. King & Son, 1905). 45 SHAW, Stanford, History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 46 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, National Geographic atlas of the world 7th Edition, 7th edition (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1999). 47 GOLDIE, Mark, WOKLER, Robert, The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century political thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 48 F. L. Cross, ed., “Great Schism,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005). 49 NORMAN, Edward, BARRETT, Jill, The Roman Catholic Church: An illustrated history, 1 edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). 50 WOOD, Gordon S, The radicalism of the American Revolution, Reprint edition (New York, NY: Vintage, 1993). 51 ADAMS, Willi Paul, MORRIS, Richard B., The first American constitutions:

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world” and paved the way for all subsequent liberal revolutions including the French Revolution (French: Révolution Française, 1789-1799 A.D.).52 This European revolution fundamentally remade the modern world by triggering the forcible replacement of religiously-backed absolute monarchies and the centrality of faith with liberal social contract-based democracies and their secular humanist values throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean (page 117-130).53 Napoléon capitalized on the ensuing European political chaos to rise through the French army from artillery officer to Emperor, conquering continental Europe before the combined forces of the UK, German states, Russia, Prussia, Spain, and Portugal in the Sixth Coalition ended his reign.54 But this was not before his legal system, the Napoleonic Code, spread through his empire eventually influencing the legal system of 70 nations globally with its distinctive secular liberal social contract as the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire (page xxxiii).55 The rising political and philosophical tensions among the emerging modern states of Europe and Asia amid the 19th century’s industry-based economic growth came to a head with the battles lines drawn between the Triple Entente of the UK, France, and Russia (along with the looser US, Japan, and Spain alliances) and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire in WWI (1914-1918 A.D.) which resulted in the end or injury of 37 million lives and the Triple Alliance’s defeat (pages 151-175).56,57 Hitler built on Germany’s ensuing nationalistic anger to successfully craft himself as its totalitarian leader set on relentlessly imperializing Europe with his Nietzschean Nazi philosophy, asserting socialist Germany’s overman superiority over Jews, the handicapped, Catholic religious and other dissidents, and similar Untermenschs (German: ‘sub-humans’) while railing against the international order he believed was Republican ideology and the making of the state constitutions in the revolutionary era, trans. Rita And Robert Kimber, Expanded edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001). 52 Ibid. 53 Ferenc Fehér, ed., The French Revolution and the birth of modernity, Reprint edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990). 54 BELL, David A, Napoleon: A concise biography, 1 edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015). 55 ROBERTS, Andrew, Napoleon: A life (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2014). 56 SAGAN, Scott D, “1914 revisited: Allies, offense, and instability,” International Security 11, no. 2 (1986): 151–75. 57 VAN EVERA, Stephen, “The cult of the offensive and the origins of the First World War,” International Security 9, no. 1 (1984): 58–107.

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imposed by the democratic capitalist nations of post-WWI the UK and US along with France.58 He was soon joined by Italy’s fascist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945 A.D.) seeking to similarly make Italy a world power as a “New Roman Empire” (page 30).59 Amid Hitler’s Holocaust exterminating 11 million people60 and the global reach of the conflict, WWII claimed over 100 million lives from 30 nations, becoming the deadliest human war ever (page 5).61 The resulting victory of the Allies led by the US, Russia, UK, and France over the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy set the stage for the UN’s global peace. During this historic absence of open war, international power shifted from the old great powers of Western Europe to the Cold War stand-off between the democratic US and communist Soviet Union (with their nuclear arms and space race), decolonization of the former European empires, and rise of the People’s Republic of China.62

2.1.2. A Brief History of Philosophy Humanity’s political history brings us to modernity’s philosophy. Political liberalism with its primary embodiment as social contract-based constitutional democracies is the dominant political philosophy of the modern era (page 110).63 Nearly half of all nations and the majority of the earth’s most powerful and richest countries are liberal democracies, having doubled in number over the last three decades (page 81).64 Outside of the world’s major religions, the most vocal and influential modern proponent of global peace, human rights, and equality has been the UN as a product of political liberalism (page 145),65 championed as the greatest realization of 58 BENDERSKY, Joseph W, A concise history of Nazi Germany, 4 edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013). 59 MURRAY, Williamson, MILLETT, Allan R., A war to be won: Fighting the Second World War, Fourth Printing edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001). 60 NIEWYK., Donald, NICOSIA, Francis, The Columbia guide to the Holocaust (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003). 61 SOMMERVILLE, Donald, The complete illustrated history of World War Two: An authoritative account of the deadliest conflict (London, UK: Lorenz Books, 2009). 62 GREENVILLE, John Ashley Soames, A history of the world from the 20th to the 21st century (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005). 63 PIERSON, Paul, ed., The new politics of the welfare state, 1 edition (Oxford University Press, 2001). 64 FARR, Thomas F., World of faith and freedom (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008). 65 SINCLAIR, Timothy J, ed., Global governance: Critical concepts in political science, 1 edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004).

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the 18th century Enlightenment’s liberal internationalism in which political economies were meant to strengthen global economic interdependence and thus peace.66 But political liberalism and its social contract have been eroding since they first leapt onto the world stage in Western Europe in the 17th century following the explosive entrance of the Scientific Revolution and subsequent Industrial Revolution (page 25-26; 607).67,68 So to understand political liberalism and its unique philosophy, we will have to first go back the beginning of political philosophy and see how politics and philosophy have often been pitted against each other since humanity began (a challenge liberalism sought to resolve). This work will advance the thesis that liberalism (and the Enlightenment) has been largely successful at producing one of the greatest advancements in human rights ‘illuminating’ humanity—but not because of liberal intellectual creations, but because of its adaptations from earlier insights of ancient philosophy primarily from Plato and Aristotle. And so the steady collapse of liberalism with its social contract philosophy is not due to the logical deficits of those classical insights but rather that the Enlightenment excluded those that would have preserved this modern philosophical movement. Analogically, the Scientific Revolution was ignited by the Renaissance Prussian mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 A.D.), when he published his heliocentric theory in 1543 replacing the Ptolemaic model (in which the sun rather than man and Earth was the center of the known universe). But 1800 years earlier, Aristarchus of Samos (Ancient Greek: ਝȡȓıIJĮȡȤȠȢ ੒ ȈȐȝȚȠȢ, 310230 B.C.) (page 172-173) had not only proposed the sun was the center of the universe, but he also estimated the correct distance of the other planets from it.69 He follows the earlier Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras (Ancient Greek: ਝȞĮȟĮȖȩȡĮȢ, 510-428 B.C.) whose cosmology had been critiqued by Plato (Ancient Greek: ȆȜȐIJȦȞ, 428-424 B.C.) in Phaedo (97b8ff) that detailed forms similar to Anaxagoras’ nous.70 Even the widely influential Enlightenment philosophers, David Hume (1711-1776 A.D.) and Immanuel 66

SCHELL, Jonathan, The unconquerable world: Power, nonviolence, and the will of the people (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 2004). 67 RAY, Kiely, Industrialization and development: A comparative analysis (Milton Park, UK: Taylor & Francis Group, 1998). 68 SPIELVOGEL, Jackson J., Western civilization: Since 1500, 9 edition, vol. 2 (Marceline, MO: Wadsworth Publishing, 2014). 69 DRAPER, John William, “History of the conflict between religion and science,” in The agnostic reader, ed. S. T. Joshi (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1874). 70 HERRMANN, Fritz-Gregor, Words and ideas: The roots of Plato’s philosophy (Swansea, UK: Classical Press of Wales, 2008).

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Kant (1724-1804 A.D.), took some of the most ‘innovative’ concepts attributed to them from the empiricism and knowledge influenced by the human perception of Aristotle, Plato’s most famous pupil (page 16).71,72 The Enlightenment was effective politically, but it was not enlightening philosophically; it was a powerful historical movement, but not permanent. The catalyst for classical philosophers’ inquiries was to truthfully understand the Supreme Good that could then inform how just societies of just humans should live; the modern Enlightenment philosophers began their inquiries to understand how societies would be prevented from interfering with individuals’ pursuit of their own self-defined good. They often accurately identified the power abuses of individuals from the political and religious groups including the European monarchy and the Catholic clergy, but they went a step further labelling as abuse any claim of leaders to a divine source of their authority. And thus they progressively restricted classical insights from their philosophies until ultimately rejecting the foundational philosophical discipline of metaphysics (or the study of being including immaterial or first causes such as God) and the higher discipline of theology. When every modern person could define her own truth and good, no one could claim power over another—yet neither could modern persons have a common language to defend the logical justification resolving disputes amongst themselves when their goods conflicted (leaving might to justify the right). Such Enlightenment philosophers thus killed philosophy as a systematic study of the objectively knowable good that ordered the understood good in each discipline (including ethics recognizing the rights of each person as substantive defensible objects rather than simply superficial labels to subjectively asserted preferences). So with philosophy unable to check politics, every person could make herself her own king and god, reducing human society to a clash of titans with no end in sight. Such philosophers attempted to limit authority to what amounted to a limitation of truth (at the expenses of unprecedented resulting human rights abuses and near annihilation of humanity in the ashes of the 1900s great wars). But to understand how this began we must first understand the Enlightenment from within itself to do justice to the earnest attempts of this great though ultimately philosophically and politically doomed approach in 71 BARNES, Jonathan, “Life and work,” in The Cambridge companion to Aristotle (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 72 Georgios Anagnostopoulos, ed., “First Athenian period,” in A companion to Aristotle (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

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whose current political turmoil our world currently stands. So many remarkable and real philosophical insights were generated during this period (to which modernity owes much gratitude including the social contract) but without a defensible metaphysics ultimately grounding them, how can they not rightfully be rejected by the listener if they conflict with her beliefs she may label as equally valid insights? So we will begin this section by looking at philosophy’s history, and then that of politics to understand how modernity has grappled with Plato’s fundamental question in the form of his philosopher-king thesis (that the just society can only be rightly ruled by the philosopher as only she would order society toward the good resulting in each person within it receiving their due). The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands...there is no other road to real happiness either for society or for the individual (473d).73

Before the Enlightenment permutations of philosophy, there was first philosophy arguably codified and formalized by Aristotle’s adoptions from Plato74 (who has influenced the subsequent two millennia of philosophy to the point that Alfred North Whitehead argued that “the safest general characterization of the…[Western] philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” [II.1.1]),75 which set the foundation for modern science and philosophy. Philosophers and political theorists since Plato have either drawn from him or written against him, down to the current debate about the future of philosophy and politics. Political philosophy in its rudimentary form was first proposed by Plato (page 170)76 with his Republic developing the thoughts of his mentor, Socrates, whom the legendary Roman orator, Cicero (Classical Latin: maӃr.k҂s t҂l.lѢ.҂s kѢ.kѓ.ro, 106-43 B.C.),77 regarded as the one who “called philosophy down from 73

PLATO, The Republic of Plato: Second Edition. KRAUT, Richard, “Plato,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/. 75 WHITEHEAD, Alfred North, “Process and reality: An essay in cosmology delivered during the session 1927/28,” University of Edinburgh, 1929). 76 GILL, Mary Louise, PELLEGRIN, Pierre, A companion to ancient philosophy (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). 77 RAWSON, Elizabeth, Cicero: A portrait (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). 74

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heaven and placed it in the midst of our cities, even introduced it into our homes, and forced it to ask questions about our life, morals, and the good and bad in things” (5.4).78 The questions Socrates began to ask (about the ‘why’ behind life before he was executed by the Athenian government for ‘corrupting the youth’) were the ones Plato began organizing into the science of philosophy, a science Aristotle gave foundation and frame to and thus empowered its expansion globally as humans teaching others how to make fire. While learning under Plato at his Athenian Academy for 20 years,79 Aristotle would go on to produce the West’s first comprehensive philosophy encompassing an exhaustive number of arts and sciences including metaphysics, epistemology, (formal) logic, rhetoric, ethics, political philosophy, political science, biology, physics, zoology, music, theatre, aesthetics, and poetry. Upon Plato’s death, he accepted the invitation of King Philip II of Macedon (Ancient Greek: ĭȓȜȚʌʌȠȢ Ǻǯ ੒ ȂĮțİįȫȞ, 382336 B.C.) in 343 B.C. to tutor his son, Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.).80 Dutifully educated by Aristotle with his refinement of Plato’s philosopherking argument in political philosophy along with his own comprehensive philosophy, religion, medicine, and art, Alexander would eventually name many of his fellow classmates as generals in his army. Aristotle nurtured within Alexander a fervent passion for Greek culture and thought, to the point that when he launched his force on the ancient world, he took with him a copy of the Iliad annotated by Aristotle himself (page 65-66; 45-47; 16).81,82,83 Alexander would go on to craft one of the largest ancient empires which stretched from Greece to Egypt to India by the time he was thirty.84,85 As 78

CICERO, Tusculan disputations, ed. and trans. J. E. King, Revised ed. edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). 79 ANAGNOSTOPOULOS, “First Athenian Period.” 80 RUSSELL, Bertrand, A history of western philosophy (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004). 81 FOX, Robin Lane, The search for Alexander (Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1980). 82 RENAULT, Mary, The nature of Alexander the Great (London, UK: Penguin, 2001). 83 MCCARTY, Nick, Alexander the Great (Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin, 2004). 84 BLOOM, Jonathan M., BLAIR, Sheila S., The Grove encyclopedia of Islamic art and architecture: Mosul to Zirid, vol. 3 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). 85 GOLDEN, Peter B., Central Asia in world history (Oxford, UK: Oxford

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one of humanity’s most successful military leaders,86 Alexander is credited with prefiguring the Renaissance in his cultural diffusion of Greek (Hellenistic) civilization throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asian. In his wake, Greek philosophy, science, art, and architecture rapidly spread and remained for a millennium into the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century A.D.87 The thought of the ancient Greek physician-philosopher Aristotle fertilized the rest of the European continent over 1,000 years later through the translation by the Catholic Dominican priest, William of Moerbeke (12151286 A.D.), of Aristotle’s Politics in 1260. His fellow priest, Aquinas, with his prolific writings integrating Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian theology would ensure Aristotle a dominant place in modern philosophy through its continued global scholarship via philosophers within and outside the Catholic Church since (seen even in the foundation of the UN’s UDHR which we will argue for in depth shortly). And over four centuries later in France, the Enlightenment thinkers as they would come to be known adopted Aristotle (stripped of Aquinas’ Christian Catholicism) to argue for the democratic state justified by reason alone instead of reason and faith as a stripped down philosophy without theology, politics without religion, the king without God.88 Their interpretation grounded this new political philosophical foundation, breaking with all of philosophy up to that point by appropriating a concept developed by Aquinas on Aristotle’s original framework: a true political philosophy describes the just state protecting individual rights, justified by reason and not just by religion-defined revelation and so was grounded in the telos or end of enabling the individual’s virtuous life (page 161-187).89,90 The thesis they were so keen on was what Aristotle argued in his Politics:

University Press, 2011). 86 YENNE, Bill, Alexander the Great: Lessons from history’s undefeated general (Basingstoke, UK: Palmgrave McMillan, 2010). 87 GREEN, Peter, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age (London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007). 88FRANK, J., A democracy of distinction: Aristotle and the work of politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 89 OBER, Josiah, “The polis as a society: Aristotle, John Rawls, and the Athenian social contract,” in The Athenian revolution, ed. Josiah Ober (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 90 OBER, Josiah, Political dissent in democratic Athens: Intellectual critics of popular rule (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

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By dissecting out Thomistic-Aristotelian teleology, theological elements, and ultimately the foundational philosophical discipline of metaphysics, the theorists behind the Enlightenment (French: le Siècle des Lumières, ‘The Century of the Lights’, 1620-1789 A.D.) were inspired by the existential questions inspired by the Scientific Revolution (1543-1687 A.D.)92 to challenge the authorities of their day—monarchs, aristocrats, and the Catholic Church. French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes (1596-1650 A.D.), is credited with launching the Enlightenment and (as evidence of the massive influence of the Enlightenment and its resultant liberalism and social contract theories on philosophy) thus as the father of modern philosophy (page 511-517).93 Descartes rejected the philosophical development stretching for over 5,000 years since the progenitors of philosophy were documented in Egyptian legal codes (page 273).94 Philosophers and politicians in every age and culture up to that point were seeking the ‘why’ behind human existence by starting with the reality of that existence. Yet Descartes believed he could trust his perception not reality. He thus reduced his philosophical concern to what he believed he could be certain about and in doing so, he separated man’s material or physical self from his immaterial or spiritual self, producing a new secular humanism in which man could be his own god, the creator of his own reality. It was as if a scientist used the scientific method to argue that there was no such thing as science or the material universe to study. For Descartes, philosophy particularly metaphysics was not required to understand human existence and thus how we are to act with each other— he became his own god by creating the truth of his existence that required no philosophical proof but simply his perception (page 511-517).95

91

ARISTOTLE, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1998 (4th century B.C.)). 92 COHEN, I. Bernard, “The eighteenth-century origins of the concept of scientific revolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 2 (1976): 257–88. 93 RUSSELL, A history of western philosophy. 94 MORENZ, Siegfried, Egyptian religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973). 95 RUSSELL, A history of western philosophy.

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The next derivative step from these unsound premises was to question (and in some cases reject) the Catholic Christian Church (and organized religion) along with the monarchs and aristocrats of Western Europe seen to embody it so that the justification of truth could shift from those entities to the individual people. From truth being objective and pre-existing man, to truth being solely subjective definitions by any man, the Enlightenment sought to guarantee global human advancement no longer encumbered by ‘old world’ rulers. And the last two world wars have demonstrated that man rather became his own tyrannical ruler, no longer impeded by claims to a higher authority but solely governed by whatever she wills and justifies under her own conception of ‘reason.’ Though well-meaning, it was ultimately flawed, futile, and fatal. The above philosophical moves would be like the world’s physicians deciding that biology, chemistry, physics are irrelevant to treating patients—just their opinion about patients. Would any patient still go to those physicians? So then why do political regimes and philosophers still go to this modern ‘philosophy’ that has now devolved into an anti-philosophy lacking any systematic logic-based progression from metaphysically-grounded defensible premises to their resultant conclusions uniting diverse peoples? For if modern man post-Descartes can define his own truth, why does he have to justify how he defines it? Descartes’ rationalist arguments in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) with his skepticism was further developed and expanded to politics by “The Father of Liberalism,” John Locke (1632-1704 A.D.)96 in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). His formulation and defense of his liberal political philosophy in the form of the social contract (in which the state made of individuals defining their own conception of the good were limited in their pursuits only by the shared desire for survival, guaranteed by their free allegiance to a shared social contract resolving conflicting pursuits) were hugely influential on the US Declaration of Independence (page 27)97 and thus expanded internationally through the US-led push two centuries later to gather allied nations against Russian communist expansion.98,99

96 HIRSCHMANN, Nancy J., Gender, class, and freedom in modern political theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 97 BECKER, Carl L., Declaration of Independence: A study in the history of political ideas, Kindle (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2013). 98 HALLIDAY, Fred, The making of the Second Cold War (London, UK: Verso Books, 1983). 99 “U.S. military deployment 1969 to the present” (Public Broadcasting Service,

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In the mid-1700s, François-Marie Arouet (‘Voltaire,’ 1694-1778 A.D.) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 A.D.) were the primary Enlightenment figures continuing this tradition as they sidestepped the more fundamental questions noted above. The majority of America’s founding fathers followed Voltaire (page 881) as his global influence expanded100—“Italy had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but France had Voltaire; he was for his country both Renaissance and Reformation, and half the [French] Revolution” (page 259)101—and inspired passionate allegiance of the later French emperor, Napoléon, who confessed when he was sixteen that he “would have fought for Rousseau against the friends of Voltaire, today it is the opposite...The more I read Voltaire the more I love him” (page 880).102 Rousseau was the leading philosopher among the Jacobin Club which overthrew French King Louis XVI (1770-1793 A.D.), beginning the French Revolution, for “in the depths of the French Revolution the Jacobin clubs all over France regularly deployed Rousseau when demanding radical reforms” (page 274).103 Rousseau was prominent also in the American Revolution through the US President and principle drafter of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826 A.D.), who directly quoted from Rousseau’s The Social Contract for the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”104 This philosophical move (of an ambiguously deist-informed, rights-centric social contract enshrined in the Declaration as a foundational document for America) was mirrored nearly two centuries later by the drafters of the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the American influence on the drafting as detailed later in this work. What shaped these thinkers’ conceptions? Despite his ardent Calvinist Christian beliefs, Rousseau advocated religious tolerance by invoking a deist conception (of a distant god observing but not intervening in mankind) 2004). 100 DURANT, Will, The story of civilization: Rousseau and revolution, vol. 10 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1967). 101 DURANT, Will, The story of philosophy 2nd Edition (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1933). 102 DURANT, The story of civilization: Rousseau and revolution. 103 ISRAEL, Jonathan, Radical enlightenment: Philosophy and the making of modernity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002). 104 DAMROSCH, Leo, “Friends of Rousseau,” Humanities Report 33, no. 4 (2012), https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/julyaugust/feature/friends-rousseau.

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to argue in The Social Contract that Christianity was a failed religion which could not serve as the theological basis for the modern democratic state (a deist ‘civil religion’ rather was required per his Contract’s final chapter) and the Christian theological doctrines of original sin and divine revelation were simply false.105 He attempted to use the emerging Enlightenment philosophy to deny the Christian theological argument for original sin106 and so was instrumental in creating the effective liberal protection of religious liberty that has lasted for the last two centuries, but at the cost of committing a categorical error using philosophy to deny another science (theology) with an effectiveness that is eroding quickly in rising religious sectarian violence globally in our day. But in his day, for the first time in philosophy’s five millennia history, man denied he had evil inclinations, and by default elevated himself to the divine. If as in Rousseau's Social Contract, it is true that reason alone authoritatively declares (without philosophical or anthropological proof) each human being is born good in the ‘state of nature,’ then human reason alone can keep man good by constructing a liberal democratic society with its laws to keep man free according to a political and legal system he obeys due to the dictates of his own uncorrupted conscience. But the philosophers up to Rousseau (including Hobbes and his ‘state of nature’ concept, Aquinas and ‘original sin,’ and Aristotle and his Ethics defining ‘evil’ or kakos people as those who reject justice and other virtues to animalistically pursue power and wealth, in addition to modern evolutionary biologists’ concept of ‘primitive instincts’) reject this. Based on his empirical research prefiguring modern evolutionary work, Aristotle argued in his political philosophy that “man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but when isolated from law and justice, he is the worst of them all”: Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal [Ancient Greek: ȗ૶ȠȞ ʌoȜȚIJȚțȩȞ, ‘animal of the polis’]. And he who by nature and not be mere accident is not a member of a state is either a bad man or above humanity…[h]e who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god (Politics, 1253a).107

105 DAMROSCH, Leo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless genius (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2005). 106 ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, Emile: Or on education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1979). 107 ARISTOTLE, Politics.

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The earliest documented expression of political philosophy was even more distant in time, stretching back to 3,000 B.C. when the Egyptian pharaohs had the explicit philosophical and religious duty to uphold Maat (Ancient Egyptian: , ‘truth,’ ‘justice,’ or ‘order’) for their citizens, as they likewise would be judged by the god, Anubis, if their Maat outweighed their Isfet (‘evil,’ ‘injustice,’ or ‘chaos’) upon their death (page 273) and thus escape devouring by the demon lion-crocodile, Ammit (Ancient Egyptian: ‘Devourer of the Dead’) and be welcomed into the fields of eternal paradise of Aaru (Ancient Egyptian: , ‘[Field of] Reeds’).108 The ancient Egyptians believed that man was not her/his own sovereign—every human being was under the authority of truth and so tied to her/his eternal fate. Rebellion against truth and justice on earth thus meant eternal non-existence. Man could deny truth and hre society’s laws, kill herself and separate her body and soul—but she could not undo the laws that governed her or her eternity. She was not her own god. Aquinas similarly followed the resulting millennia of Jewish (championed by Maimonides [1135-1204 A.D.])109 and Islamic philosophy (articulated influentially via Avicenna [980-1037 A.D.])110 along with Plato, Aristotle, and the ancient philosophers who understood man’s primitive violent instincts necessitate truth, justice, and law to orientate her/him toward human progression, while also incorporating Aquinas’ Christian theology that echoed the ancient intuition and archetype of predatory evil: Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ [Jesus] will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little (1 Peter 5: 8-10).111

So when political philosophy reached Rousseau, he denounced earlier thinkers has simply darkened by their ignorance and superstition for the preceding 50 centuries. He rather wanted man to become the lion, the king, of the animal kingdom. So he thus had to conclude man was born good and stayed good if liberal democracy-protected reason could be preserved free 108

MORENZ, Egyptian religion. GUTTMANN, J., “Thomas Aquinas and Judaism,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 4, no. 1 (1891): 158–61. 110 MCGINNIS, Jon, “Making something of nothing: Privation, possibility and potential in Avicenna and Aquinas,” The Thomist 76, no. 4 (2012): 1–25. 111 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, ed., New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2011). 109

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from archaic authoritative bodies, particularly organized religion and political regimes invoking their supposed truth propositions (while Rousseau sidestepped the question begged from his argument, namely, how can societies be or become evil if their individual members are born good?). While Rousseau and other Enlightenment political philosophers worked on crystallizing the ideals and implications of this historic movement, other disciplines were increasingly drawn into it. Influenced by Locke, the Scottish moral philosopher, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746 A.D.) rejected the Thomistic-Aristotelian argument that man’s virtuous life orientated toward eternal union with God is the telos or end of man; instead, Hutcheson reduced virtue to Enlightenment-inspired mathematics “computing the morality of actions,” determined by those that produce “the greatest happiness [utility] for the greatest numbers” (Section 3).112 His minimalistic ethical principle and phrasing would be adapted by his intellectual successor, the English Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832 A.D.), who would go on to become the ‘Father of Modern Utilitarianism’ by translating it into a more comprehensive system which has since become one of the dominant modern ethical systems (alongside and animating [along with Kantian deontology which we will discuss shortly] the social contract) and so profoundly influenced our day’s public policies and political philosophy (page 393).113 What does this utilitarianism look like? Consider just one example from the US, the main military and economic force forging the UN: utilitarian calculations were used to ‘ethically’ justify the American atomic bombing of Japan on the grounds that obliterating the Nagasaki and Hiroshima civilians would produce adequately superior utility in the form of the Japanese surrender and so cost less lives than a full land invasion) (page 31).114 Hutcheson ideas further guided his Scottish pupils, Hume and Adam Smith (1723-1790 A.D.), the father of modern economics (page 39).115,116 Like 112

HUTCHESON, Francis, “An inquiry concerning the original of our ideas of virtue or moral good,” in Selections reprinted in British moralists, ed. L. A. SelbyBigge (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1725 (1964)). 113 BENTHAM, Jeremy, A comment on the Commentaries and A fragment on Government, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart (London, UK: The Athlone Press, 1977 (1776)). 114 KETOLA, Tarja, “Our common failure: Why utilitarian ethics fails to create sustainable development.” 115 BUSSING-BURKS, Marie, Influential economists (Minneapolis, MN: The Oliver Press, 2003). 116 C.W., “Smith’s word: Adam Smith was a rather complex thinker,” The

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Hume and the Enlightenment philosophers skeptical if philosophy held any wisdom for humanity, Smith advised governments to adopt a ‘laissez-faire’ economic policy, trusting the ambiguous but imminent ‘moral sentiments’ of the people; through their self-interests, economic competition would drive down consumer costs, produce efficient free markets, and thus generate widespread political and economic prosperity.117 The British government was convinced. Adopting this Enlightenment liberal economic policy (built on trust in universal human rationality that would naturally produce the perfect society), Great Britain led the Industrial Revolution and global expansion through its Empire, exporting their liberal philosophical and political economic concepts globally to encourage uninhibited international trade (page 192).118 Yet the Enlightenment at this point faced mounting intellectual civil war; as the mathematician Descartes attempted to split the human person into body and soul, his superficial metaphysics and epistemology left a growing schism between empiricists (arguing that sensory experience produces knowledge of truth [pages 129-138])119 and rationalists (arguing for human reason as the authoritative source and test of truth [page 286]).120 Kant sought to broker a peace between the two warring camps through his unique modern metaphysics (developing Descartes’ thought while rejecting Aquinas’ Aristotelianism), epistemology, political philosophy, and ethics which produced his now famous transcendental idealist moral philosophy (page 345)121 with individuals seen as autonomous and free rational beings governed by their reason as their sole absolute sovereign (page 37)122

Economist, 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/11/economic-history. 117 FITZGIBBONS, Athol, Adam Smith’s system of liberty, wealth, and virtue: The moral and political foundations of The Wealth of Nations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995). 118 SEABROOKE, L., Global standards of market civilization (Oxford, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2006). 119 Stathis Psillos and Martin Curd, eds., The Routledge companion to philosophy of science, 1 edition (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008). 120 LACEY, A.R., A dictionary of philosophy 3rd Edition (London, UK: Routledge, 1996). 121 KANT, Immanuel, Critique of pure reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London, UK: Macmillan, 1933 (1781)). 122 WOOD, Allen, Kant’s ethical thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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guiding the deontological categorical imperative (page 30).123 Despite Kant’s robust philosophy and the societal progress in human rights afforded by the Enlightenment, this movement left modernity increasingly unsatisfied with the lack of substantive answers to their deepest questions about human existence, essence, and meaning (which we will discuss shortly). These questions are nothing new. They have been present since the earliest recorded legal systems seeking to order human life according to universal conceptions of what the ‘good’ life aims toward for humanity. But where pre-modern peoples had philosophy as a systematic discipline to critically examine questions and answers, modern man post-Descartes increasingly was skeptical answers could be found at all. Philosophy was increasingly seen by modern thinkers as simply a sinking ship they sought to patch up, including the system developed by Kant, “the most powerful moral philosopher of modern times” (page 108).124 By setting man and her/his rationality as the absolute sovereign over truth, man not only did away with appeals to God or metaphysics but even to the true, the good, and the beautiful, or any meaning to human life at all (aside from the animalistic survival and reproduction instincts). And following the Scientific Revolution, modern man became increasingly desperate for answers shifting from God (philosophy, theology, the Catholic Christian Church and organized religion, etc.) to the Enlightenment, to Romanticism, and ultimately to Nietzschean nihilism. While recognizing the significant insights of Kant who sought to save the Enlightenment project (freeing humanity from a restrictive Aristotelian or Christian [i.e. Thomistic] teleology through an independently rational justification for morality) and Nietzsche who sought to save us from the Enlightenment (through an irrational will to power as he argued morality is an illusion), MacIntyre argues the historical and philosophical trajectory from the earnest but ultimately failed Enlightenment leads to the dominant modern emotivism assertions of incommensurable subjective preferences of which Nietzsche could provide the diagnosis but not the treatment (After Virtue, page 132 and 315).125 Philosophy had up to the modern era in varying degrees critically interrogated different arguments for truth as defendants in a court of law (of metaphysics and epistemology articulating 123

KANT, Immanuel, Grounding for the metaphysics of morals: 3rd Edition, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993 (1785)). 124 SOLOMON, Robert, From Hegel to existentialism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987). 125 MACINTYRE, Alasdair, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2013).

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being, the good, truth, and how humans can know them), to justify which conceptions of the true, the good, and the beautiful were guilty of logical fallacies or unsound premises and thus would be exiled from society. The prosecuting attorney was philosophy, the jury were the people and the fellow philosophers, and objective truth was the final absolute judge articulated as the Divine or metaphysical accounts of the Uncaused Cause. But the Enlightenment capped off by Kant made humanity’s rationality as judge, jury, prosecutor, and defendant. Nietzsche recognized this reduction had no binding objective justification, so he passionately argued for the ‘freed’ life outside of such ‘law’ (though he himself failed to show why his conclusions were objectively justified or succeeded even by his standards). Circular arguments therefore left man chasing her/his own tail, as she/he reversed her/his moral evolution to revert to her/his animalistic past in which the super-man found no satisfactory justifications she/he should do anything else. And this drove man mad in this Enlightenment backlash, along with its most vocally assertive modern opponent, Nietzsche. He rejected not only Kant and Descartes, but all of philosophy including the pre-modern Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas (as he believed without proving the ‘truthful’ critique of the Enlightenment’s rejection of the premodern realists). In his 1886 Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to Philosophy of the Future, Nietzsche invokes the Enlightenment Descartes-Kantian intellectual framework (in which man creates her/his own reality) to reject Plato and the ancients (paragraph 9), Descartes for assuming that there is an “I” who can think in the first place, and Kant’s metaphysical and moral work for being nothing more than a smokescreen (paragraph 5), and even rejecting metaphysics and the fundamental Aristotelian concept of causes (paragraph 21): “It is we alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, motive, purpose.”126 By accepting (and operating within) the Enlightenment’s unsound premises, and then pushing them to conclusions that logically flowed from them, Nietzsche surgically and calmly reached the raging rational formulation that ‘God is dead’ (referring to metaphysics and any objective truth or reality intelligible to modern man) (section 125).127 His formula is rationally consistent in and itself (when viewed from the ‘inside’) but ultimately irrational in its entirety (when viewed from the ‘outside’). He levied a devastating critique against 126 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1973 (1886)). 127 MULLER-LAUTER, Wolfgan, Heidegger und Nietzsche: NietzscheInterpretationen III (Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 2000).

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the Enlightenment thinkers yet struggled to justify his own system of thought as distinct from and defensible in contrast to their system of thought. Still, he hurried modern philosophy to its precipice by asserting at the end of the day, the most it could provide for humanity was the delusions of a mad man (which may be consistent in themselves but nonetheless are delusions). The logical implication of the Enlightenment project according to Nietzsche therefore is nihilism, which plunges man into an existential crisis from which only the ‘will to power’ can save him—he must become the Übermensch (German: ‘Overman’ or ‘Superman’) who seizes meaning through power (paragraph 3),128 distracting himself long enough about the futility of human life until eternal death and non-existence claims him. His most complete account of this position, the 1887 On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic (German: ‘Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift’), concludes the project he began in Beyond good and Evil (page 1).129 To become his evolutionary epitome, the overman, modern man must be freed of her/his ‘slave morality.’ Nietzsche after historically tracing the development of ethics ultimately accepts what he describes as the Roman Empire’s dualism between good/bad distinction and rejects the JudeoChristian good/evil dichotomy which enslaved humanity up through the French Revolution in his view (First Treatise, paragraph 17).130 Politically and principally, he detested the Revolution along with its French Enlightenment philosophers he blamed for fueling its revolt and the ensuing French conquest of Europe with the Napoleonic wars and liberal expansion of the Enlightenment ideals.131,132 Nietzsche asserted that humanity originally understood good and bad based solely on power and its absence; in the good or noble life, the strong man could seize whatever he wanted from the weaker, and when he could not, then it was the bad life (‘ill-born’ or ‘worthless,’ Greek: įİȚȜȠȢ or țĮțȠȢ). From ‘resentment’ of the weak (i.e. philosophers, theologians, and religious clergy) against the strong (i.e. political leaders), he argues Judaism with its monotheistic God initiated the 128

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for all and none, trans. Walter Kaufmann (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1976 (1891)). 129 JANAWAY, C., Beyond selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007). 130 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, On the genealogy of morality, trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1998 (1887)). 131 WOLIN, Richard, The seduction of unreason: The intellectual romance with fascism from Nietzsche to postmodernism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 132 NICHOLLS, David, Napoleon: A biographical companion, annotated Edition (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999).

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“slave revolt in morality” (First Treatise, paragraph 7).133 For Jews and then the later Christians (and we should note Muslims as well for their theological similarities), good became acting according to the ‘moral prejudices’ dictated by an imaginary God and arbitrarily interpreted by the Jewish and Christian philosophers, theologians, and clergy. In the supposed afterlife, the weak would receive their justice for doing ‘good’ and avoiding ‘evil,’ while the powerful who acted in disobedience to this ‘natural law’ would justly receive eternal punishment. Nietzsche rejects this Judeo-Christianity’s conception (and the ancient Greek philosophers who also asserted, principally with Aristotle a realist conception of good in accordance with the natural law and evil in according with an animalistic thirst for power and wealth [c.f. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII discussion of evil/vices or ‘kakia’]) (page 119).134 Similarly to the broad Enlightenment rejection of all philosophies that had come before, Nietzsche would reject the entire Enlightenment philosophy, which he argued still had imported Judeo-Christianity's good/evil distinction. Nietzsche therefore could achieve his grand desire to free the overman from ‘slave morality’ to seek power for its own sake, but at the expense of his humanity and risk of its future. He tosses out all precedent philosophy by trashing metaphysics and thus any distinction between man and beast (i.e. in contrast to Aquinas’ metaphysical argument for the human subject as a rational animal and thus a person, a unique individual composed of the body as soul as form per each person’s human nature or essence) and the resultant political and moral philosophies that could have prevented this decay into bestiality. Thus Nietzsche clarifies his overman is not a man evolved further than the ape as a new being—he is rather a stronger ape above any ‘slave morality’ (paragraph 13). One cannot fault animal and thus human predators for being ‘evil’ per Nietzsche. They exert their strength over the weak which are pitied for they have a ‘bad life’ being inferior in strength to the powerful. And though it is notable that Nietzsche rejected fanatical nationalism and anti-Semitism, it is not difficult to see how his sister was able to translate his writings into political application for the contemporary German Nazi party and Hitler’s nearly successful global conquest, as the superior race exerted its ‘will to power’ over the weaker states, subject only to their desire for power and not any ‘slave morality’ as nothing in Nietzsche’s philosophy logically prevents this political extension 133

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, On the genealogy of morality. ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, glossary and introductory essay, trans. Joe Sachs (Bemidji, MN: Focus Publishing, 2002 {349 B.C.}).

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of his thought).135 We will look shortly in more detail at the political and historical implications of this nihilism and blind ‘will to power’ in the ensuing world wars of the 20th century. But first let us briefly look at the internal structure of Nietzsche’s profound insights amid his mad philosophy or antiphilosophy. In the postmodern world following the release of Nietzsche’s overman upon the world, the Thomistic-Aristotelian MacIntyre in his aptly titled After Virtue rejects Nietzsche and the broader nihilism while concurrently recognizing the genuine insights he carefully detailed.136 MacIntyre argues that Nietzsche rightly deduced the truth that modern liberal philosophers following the Enlightenment tradition which constructed morality with its associated ‘logical reasons’ for adherence to its precepts (i.e. Kantian categorical imperative) simply to hide its vacuous internal structure, built on ‘prejudices’ hiding no substance. But these two thinkers diverged in their conclusions—Nietzsche to despairing nihilism, and MacIntyre to optimism for unlike the Enlightenment intellectual descendants (including Nietzsche), MacIntyre understood this broad project was a series of logical fallacies built upon the primary one—a non sequitur argument that objectively asserted without proving that there is no objective truth. He gives Nietzsche due credit for identifying the psychological forces influencing Kant and Hume’s moral philosophies, independent of the philosophies themselves (page 136):137 For it was Nietzsche's historic achievement to understand more clearly than any other philosopher...not only that what purported to be appeals of objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will but also the nature of the problems that this posed for philosophy (page 132).138

Nietzsche, according to MacIntyre, understood rightly that the Enlightenment thinkers were poised on the precipice of human nature—and they leapt upwards seeking to soar toward the sun of truth using their own constructed wings of the sovereign human reason. But like in the warning of the Greek legend of Icarus (Ancient Greek: țĮȡȠȢ), hubris blinded him to reality and his father’s imploring to follow his flight as Icarus chose rather to fly too closely to the sun’s heat and so with melted wings plunged to his death in

135

DIETHE, Carol, Nietzsche’s sister and The Will to Power: A biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (University of Illinois Press, 2003). 136 MACINTYRE, Alasdair, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2013). 137 MURPHY, Mark. Alasdair MacIntyre. Cambridge. 2003. 138 Ibid.

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the sea below (page 132).139 But where MacIntyre would use this departing point to implore modern man to get off the ledge (and return to the realism of Thomistic-Aristotelianism, able to guide him as in Plato’s cave allegory toward the sun of the highest good objectively knowable), Nietzsche opted rather to simply battle all other modern men for power on this existential ledge until he would fall to his death. But some of the voices of Nietzche’s contemporaries tempted him off that fatal ledge which he arrived at only after his intense psychological scrutiny left him with no choice but to abandon modern philosophy for his own nihilistic power-focused belief system. In the same year he published On the Genealogy of Morals, he encountered the work of the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky [Russian: Ɏɺɞɨɪ Ɇɢɯɚғɣɥɨɜɢɱ Ⱦɨɫɬɨɟғɜɫɤɢɣ, 18211881 A.D.), later noting he was “the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn” (page 45).140 It was Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, his equivalent of Nietzsche’s Madman, which similarly came to grips psychologically and philosophically with the bleak superficiality of modern philosophy in his version of the overman as not the powerful but “the positively good and beautiful man” (page 59-63)141 This hero, the epileptic Prince Myshkin, considered weak in mind and body due to his innocence and seizures, still would adamantly assert for the reader that “the world will be saved by beauty!” (I.7)142 His subsequent novel, Demons, further developed this theory that: Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do in the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here (II.8).143

It would take Dostoevsky’s 1868 correspondence with his niece to finally name this ‘beauty’: All writers…who have sought to represent Absolute Beauty, were unequal to the task, for it is an infinitely difficult one. The beautiful is the ideal; but 139

WILLIAMS, Gareth D., Banished voices: Readings in Ovid’s exile poetry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 140 FRANCIS, Arthur Morius, Nihilism: Philosophy of nothingness (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2015). 141 PEACE, Richard, Dostoyevsky: An examination of the major novels (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 142 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, The idiot (New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012 {1874}). 143 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, Demons, ed. Ronald Meyer, trans. Robert A. Maguire, New Ed. / edition (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 2008 {1872}).

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ideals, with us as in civilized Europe, have long been wavering. There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel (XXXIX).144

Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers and Nietzsche, Dostoevsky believed humanity’s long history of philosophical and theological development seeking the true, the good, the beautiful—the absolute truth about his existence and his good, which Plato’s allegorical sun could only simply represent—was a possible and personal task. For this tortured Russian novelist, the ‘absolute ideal’ became incarnate in Jesus Christ, who alone could make life meaningful, not the Scientific, Industrial, or Enlightenment Revolutions which brought him science, bread, and new ideas. But for Nietzsche, he could not follow the Thomistic-like Icarus’ father showing him how to follow his wisdom and flight path, and he could not follow the Enlightened Icarus’s plunge to his watery death. He remained on the existential ledge, transiently comforted by his musings about power in a meaningless universe in which he felt absolutely alone. The resulting 3 decades following Nietzsche’s death brought WWI and WWII out of the Western Europe that had birthed the Enlightenment, as individuals and states laid aside rationality to claim power at any moral cost. Observing the resultant horrors in the bloodbath, modern man rediscovered the objective good/evil distinction, as in the words of the later UN Secretary General, the “founding of this organization was a direct response to the Holocaust…The evil that destroyed the 6 million Jews and others in those camps is one that still threatens all of us today.”145 In the wake of Hitler’s Holocaust in which the Nietzschean ‘will to power’ was operationalized politically, the UN through its Charter, UDHR, and all later declarations including the UDBHR affirmed the global political and philosophical consensus of different peoples, states, and belief systems that every person has inherent and infinite dignity and thus rights that states have the correlative duties to protect.

144

Ethel Colburn Mayne, trans., Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his family and friends (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2006). 145 UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE SECTION, “Evil of Holocaust Still Threatens World, Annan Says ahead of Special UN Assembly Session,” January 19, 2005, https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=13083&Cr=general&Cr1=asse mbly#.WR3mzGjytPZ.

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The creation of the UN at least in theory and declaration provided humanity the first ever instance of every nation in the world (voted for by all except Vatican City, the Catholic Church’s spiritual and administrative capital, and affirmed by all including the Vatican)146 with the Socratic philosopher-king dream of an “end to the troubles of states...[and] humanity itself” by “political power and philosophy thus com[ing] into the same hands.”147 The UN philosophy formulated in the UDHR with its derivative bioethics in the UDBHR accomplished what other belief systems have not—universal acceptance by the world’s states. Yes, global peace in absence of another world war has concretely stretched the entire lifespan thus far of the UN. But yes, rising hostilities continue with rapid technological development such as AI-GNR with growing military application and the likelihood of an “AI arms race.”148 Yes, states with their recognized political regimes and UN membership maintain the vast majority of political power internationally, but no this does not prevent the rise of such non-state actors as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Arabic: ζϋ΍Ω, ISIL) which the UN and states globally have struggled since 2013 to contain amid their “historic scale” ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, and war crimes.149 So amid these technological and anthropological developments placing additional pressure on the UN’s political and philosophical foundation affirming human dignity and rights, we are faced increasingly with a challenging question—why respect rights? The Enlightenment gave the UN its social contract that facilitated unprecedented political convergence of the world’s states. But it cannot philosophically justify its foundation and thus its conclusions, including the existence of rights and the duties of states to protect them. The UN committed itself in its foundational charter to form for the ultimate purpose of “international peace and security…in conformity with the principles of justice and international law” (I.1.1.), anchored by the world’s nations united by “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and 146

“Member States,” United Nations, accessed May 18, 2017, http://www.un.org/en/member-states/. 147 PLATO, The republic of Plato: Second edition. 148 KNIGHT, Will, “Military robots: Armed, but how dangerous?,” MIT’s Technology Review, August 3, 2015, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539876/military-robots-armed-but-howdangerous/. 149 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, Ethnic cleansing on a historic scale: The Islamic State’s systematic targeting of minorities in northern Iraq (London, UK: Peter Benenson House, 2014).

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worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (Preamble).150 Thus began the UN as a conglomerate of careful political compromises joining not simply nations but also diverse belief systems on consensus for principles (without explicit detail of their philosophical foundation and justification). The Charter clearly rejected Nietzschean nihilism with its overman lust for power at the expense of the weak, while seeming to adopt Enlightenment political liberalism with its insistence of a global human order predicated upon shared protection of individual rights as principles. Yet basing these rights on a shared ‘faith’ in human dignity invokes the Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law ethics predicated upon a realist metaphysics (entailing its argument for human essence created in God’s image and orientated toward the telos of eternal union with God as fulfillment/perfection of that essence; we will shortly describe historically how the framers of the UDHR were influenced by both philosophical streams specifically). Its charter claimed its foundational purpose is peace, according to justice, based on dutifully protecting each person’s rights flowing from her/his dignity. Therefore the UN at its core committed itself to eventually having to choose between only two philosophical options to make its political structure work long-term: is this justice political only or also metaphysical? Is it Enlightenment political liberalism (which excludes all other philosophies), or it is ThomisticAristotelianism (which can incorporate a metaphysically grounded liberalism that allows philosophical convergence of pluralistic peoples)? The first logically collapses into Nietzschean nihilistic with devastating global consequences (i.e. the Holocaust and WWII which prompted the UN’s formation). The latter is logically consistent and sound though politically unpopular to secular liberal states. Yet the UN cannot logically invoke the Thomistic-Aristotelian conception of peace (built on justice that is grounded in rights and ultimately human dignity) while concurrently accepting liberalism’s rejection of the foundational metaphysics of being, truth, and human nature or essence (including dignity). One could argue that the UN did not envision the Socratic dream of political power and philosophy being in the same hand but rather one political body holding each philosophy in a hand—both pulling in different directions, intensifying the choice for one that excludes the other (i.e. political liberalism) and the latter which can include the former (i.e. Thomistic-Aristotelianism), particularly as AI-GNR and other historical developments are increasingly forcing the UN’s hand.

150

UNITED NATIONS, “The Charter of the United Nations” (United Nations, 1945), http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/.

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So if the UN can achieve its purpose to resolve political conflict, including for AI-GNR, we must thus seek to resolve this landmark global organization’s philosophical conflict between its political liberalist social contractarianism and Thomistic-Aristotelianism. Yet how this is resolved brings us back to why its foundational belief (in which its purpose, structure, and operations are based) is expressed as a shared “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.” And the why takes us to when the UN was founded to understand its social contract structure, infused by a Thomistic-Aristotelian spirit and substance. The UN’s first concrete blueprint was drafted in 1939 by the US State Department,151 followed by the 1941 Declaration by United Nations written by US President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945 A.D.) and assisted by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965 A.D.) and Roosevelt aide, Harry Hopkins (1890-1946 A.D.).152 Roosevelt and Churchill politically united Russia and China with the US and UK as the four major WWII Allied powers to sign this Declaration one year later on New Year’s Day.153 Roosevelt first coined the term the ‘United Nations’ to gather through the Declaration what would become the Allied political alliance of 26 governments sharing not only the common political mission to defeat Hitler and the Axis states but also the common philosophical belief that such an alliance was ultimately “to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands” (page 172-175; 447-453).154,155,156 Roosevelt then hosted this alliance of the then 50 governments at the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco on April 25, 1945, to draft the UN Charter which would be ratified by the newly established Security Council (under majority control by the modern liberal states of the US, UK, 151

HOOPES, Townsend, BRINKLEY, DOUGLAS, FDR and the creation of the U.N. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000 {1997}). 152 URQUHART, Brian, “Looking for the sheriff,” The New York Review of Books 45, no. 12 (July 16, 1998): 48–53. 153 UNITED NATIONS, “Declaration of the United Nations,” The Yearbook of the United Nations 1942, http://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?volume=194647&page=36&searchType=advanced. 154 ROLL, David L, The Hopkins touch: Harry Hopkins and the forging of the alliance to Defeat Hitler, 1 edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015). 155 SHERWOOD, Robert E, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An intimate history (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1948). 156 SCHLESINGER, Stephen C, Act of creation: The founding of the United Nations: A story of super powers, secret agents, aartime allies and enemies, and their quest for a peaceful world (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003).

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and France serving as permanent members) and the remaining 50 nations.157 Then in 1946 the first UN General Assembly chose the US metro of New York City as its headquarters.158 The first and foundational philosophical formulation of the UN came in 1948 with the UDHR, serving as the moral basis for the subsequent UN documents and treaties including the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (page 377) which along with the UDHR constitutes the UN International Bill of Human Rights, an international legal corpus internationally binding on all member states via ratification by them.159 And then in 2003, Marcello Spatafora (1941-present), Italy’s Permanent Representative to the UN who would go on to become the President of the UN Security Council, spoke for the European Union (EU) by arguing the UDHR serves as one of humanity’s most influential documents by interweaving global politics with human rights through international law and ethics,160 evidenced by every UN member state invited to participate alongside elected principal drafters of the UDHR, painstakingly fine tuning cooperative convergence of the disparate voices and beliefs systems over two years, 275 meetings, and 1,000 votes.161 Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962 A.D.), through her UN role as Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights drafting the UDHR championed the “Four Freedoms” (of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear) he outlined in his 1941 State of the Union address until they became enshrined in the Declaration’s preamble: Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed the highest

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DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, “Milestones in the United Nations history” (United Nations, 2012). 158 Ibid. 159 FOMERAND, Jacques, The A to Z of the United Nations (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009). 160 PRESS RELEASE, “International human rights defenders honoured as General Assembly marks Fifty-Fifth anniversary of Universal Declaration,” United Nations Meeting Coverage and Press Releases, December 10, 2003, http://www.un.org/press/en/2003/ga10220.doc.htm. 161 MORSINK, Johannes, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, drafting, and intent (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

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Chapter 2 aspiration of the common people.162

Thus the principle architect of the UN’s political and philosophical structure was the US, itself the chief expression of the Enlightenment liberal experiment in political philosophy. If there are any remaining doubt about the liberal social contract tradition driving the UN, let us briefly analyze a few recent explicit articulations of the UN’s underlying political philosophy of liberal social contractarianism by notable and leading UN officials and theorists. First, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom (1952-present) in his assigned mission of facilitating peaceful relations with these two nations (after the 2011 civil war which split the nations into two) recently proposed the “underlying conflict” delaying the mission success is what he termed an “incomplete social contract” which he is now assisting in its completion.163 Next the UN’s International Forum for Social Development in its publication, The Role of the United Nations (2006), reduces its conception of justice to a social contract articulated “from a philosophical, moral or political perspective…by a John Rawls, John Stuart Mill or a Jean Jacques Rousseau.”164 Finally, in describing the UN in its primary mission of peace, the former UN senior official of multiple peacekeeping missions throughout Africa and Asia165 and current Chair of Japan’s Hiroshima Peacebuilders Center (HPC) Council, Sukehiro Hasegawa (Japanese: 蠃簠詐 虫贙, 1942present) further elaborates on this social contract. The Japanese-born, American-educated Hasegawa asserts that: To realize sustainable peace…the United Nations has basically accepted and followed the political and moral philosophy developed by John Rawls in 1971. Liberal democracy and the rule of law, along with the protection of human rights, became pillars for governance. Constitutions have been

162

WHITE, E.B., et al., The United Nations fight for the four freedoms (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), accessed May 18, 2017. 163 UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE SECTION, “Interview with Nicholas Haysom,” {UN News Centre}, October 12, 2016, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55276#.WR3waGgrJPZ. 164 THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, “Social justice in an open world: The role of the United Nations” (United Nations, 2006), http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/ifsd/SocialJustice.pdf. 165 UNITED NATIONS MEETINGS COVERAGE AND PRESS RELEASES, “Sukehiro Hasegawa appointed as head of the UN office in Timor-Leste,” June 3, 2005, http://www.un.org/press/en/2005/sga926.doc.htm.

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written and state institutions of governance established to achieve fairness in society.166

Like the UN, the philosophy of Rawls (1921-2002 A.D.) had been sharpened by the horrors of WWII in which he served as a decorated American infantryman in New Guinea and the Philippines—before encountering firsthand the ensuing devastation unleashed by his government dropping the atomic bombs on Japanese civilians at Hiroshima.167 What the Holocaust was for the UN, so was Hiroshima for Rawls as he left his Christian faith168 and the American military in January 1946 to obtain his Princeton doctorate of moral philosophy which would become his life’s contribution to global peace, seeking to design a peaceful liberal state safeguarded by human reason alone, free from the subversion of organized religion (page 34) and the errors of the past…169 Over the next five decades, Rawls would become the most prominent champion of modern political liberalism and the social contract tradition, regarded eventually as the “most important political philosopher of the 20th century,”170 whose masterpiece, the 1971 A Theory of Justice was likewise considered “one of the primary texts in political philosophy” and the “most important work in moral philosophy since the end of World War II” (page 774-775).171 Like Kant, Rawls resurrected the Enlightenment liberal project for his day through an elaborate system drawing not only from early liberal philosophers but also more modern anti-Enlightenment figures including Nietzsche by creating a patchwork of mutually exclusive philosophies which has thus far been influential globally, including with the UN conceiving of peace as a process of promoting liberal democratic states deriving their legitimacy from reason-based social contracts equally protecting every individual’s human rights. To briefly summarize his complex thought: Rawls like Nietzsche rejected a metaphysical foundation for society in favor of a political one (i.e. 166

HASEGAWA, Sukehiro, “Post-conflict leadership,” UN Chronicle, April 2016, https://unchronicle.un.org/article/post-conflict-leadership. 167 KING, Iain, “Thinker at war: Rawls,” Military History Monthly 45, no. June 2014 (June 13, 2014). 168 WENAR, Leif, “John Rawls,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/rawls/. 169 SIDER, Ronald J., et al., Church, state and public justice: Five views (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, n.d.). 170 GORDON, David, “Going off the Rawls,” The American Conservative, July 28, 2008, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/going-off-the-rawls/. 171 “John Rawls,” Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, n.d.).

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his 1985 essay, Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical)172 in which the modern liberal state accepts the “ideal of public reason” (his update on Rousseau’s ‘civil religion’) to assure ‘overlapping consensus’ of pluralistic belief systems on the Kantian conception of human good (the ‘good’ deriving not from God or metaphysics, but from the good will acting dutifully according to the universal moral law to which autonomous human individuals commit their free will), in the form of democratic values of fairness and freedom; justice as fairness therefore serves as the overarching societal principle uniting the state and guiding its social contract that protects the rights of every citizen to pursue her/his own self-defined ends including her/his conception of the good.173 He therefore argued that “the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position” (page 774-775).174 Rawls distinguishes between society and the state as from the community of pluralistic peoples composing a society arises a state when its rules of shared political identity and governance are codified through a social contract according to the above development. In the Nietzschean absence of metaphysical justification, Rawls attempts to logically justify his refurbished Kantian idealism through the Rousseauian public reason and his own thought experiments. These include the Hobbesian ‘original position’ state of nature modified with the maxim rule of game theory in which every individual as an equal from behind the ‘veil of ignorance’ must create principles of justice which will impartially protect the rights of each (page 189).175 Despite the strengths of the political durability and philosophic depth of the UDHR/UDBHR’s social contract and particularly Rawls’s system so influential on the later UN instruments, this contract is vulnerable to the critique about how is it anything more than a democratically constructed list of beliefs and constructs, changeable as any majority vote dictate. Without a foundation, is it now similar to (though with more serious content than) five children agreeing by majority that chocolate ice cream is the best ice cream? If the strongest child does not enforce the consensus, then nothing stops it from being changed to i.e. vanilla flavor (or by analogy to the UN’s standpoint, from rights protection to rights rejection once enough states vote

172

RAWLS, John, “Justice as fairness: Political not metaphysical,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 223–51. 173 RAWLS, John, A theory of justice (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1971). 174 “John Rawls.” 175 LADEN, Anthony, “Games, fairness, and Rawls’s A theory of justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 20, no. 3 (1991): 189–222.

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for the latter). The initial drafts of the UDHR saw this philosophical impasse coming. Something more rigorous and explicit was required to ensure the Declaration of Human Rights is not replaced with i.e. a Declaration of AntiHuman Rights. But what if the UDHR’s foundation pointed already to something more robust? What if the framework is already in place to flesh out a foundation that can make concrete what is only assumed? Otherwise, the UN staking its entire identity firmly in human rights and duties becomes just a passing fad, doomed to the same ultimate logical indefensibility that undermines the social contract system. Given the ultimate unsuccessful Enlightenment to rationally justify mortality without a substantive metaphysics, modern liberal thinkers and their descendants must either choose to acknowledge their ethics systems are unnecessarily complex and lengthy articulation of the prevailing preferred ice cream flavor or they must explicitly choose a philosophical foundation that justifies their derivative ethics systems. There is nothing in their systems that permanently prevents the reader from espousing passionate awe for Hitler attempting to exterminate all Jews, Catholic religious, and other ‘non-desirables.’ Neo-Nazi supporters might just as well wait long enough for the modern social contracts to be taken over by Nazi sympathies such that the majority vote to chisel their hatred of the Jewish people into the history books again. Without metaphysics, there is ethics specifically or philosophy more generally that can serve as a check on unjust political systems or actions. Therefore the above social contracts in their current states are not true ethical systems. They are strictly speaking, anti-ethics, for they attempt in varying degrees to abandon ethics, which is a sub-discipline within philosophy, under the guise of historic victories in ethics and human rationality. Medicine is not revolutionized for the better by abandoning biology. Ethics that forsakes its underlying metaphysics thus falls short of human enlightenment; it collapses rather into taking up caveman clubs again. But even if the above logical argument is rejected, the pragmatic angle is clear—positive supporters of the above anti-ethics systems cannot support such positive international law for long. Just one strong leader (or leading majority) is needed to re-write the Declaration to reject rights. But just one foundational grounding in the alternative (a natural law ethic systems with its associated millennia-long metaphysics tradition) can save the Declaration by appealing to an authority higher than the governing body to preserve it. And practically speaking, with the UN’s human rights-duties framework so

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entrenched in international and state legal and societal structures globally, is it not expedient (and logically sound) to rediscover the door left ajar within the Declaration itself, into an implicit metaphysical commitment and true ethics system? Anticipating this debate, the initial UDHR drafters produced their ethical formulation within a social contract framework, but with a ThomisticAristotelian natural law foundation. Though latent, it is still robustly confirmed historically in the UDHR creation and philosophically in its structure. Eleanor Roosevelt’s successor as Chair of the Human Rights Commission responsible for the UDHR drafting, Lebanese ThomisticAristotelian Charles Malik was the most influential natural law voice in the document’s creation.176 As the main composer of the Declaration’s seminal first draft, Canadian legal scholar, John Humphrey (1905-1995 A.D.), asserted it was Malik and China’s Confucian Peng-Chun Chang (Chinese: 蟪访諥, 1892-1957 A.D.) who “intellectually dominated...the Commission.” Humphrey noted how Malik “believed in natural law” as it “provided the answer to most, if not all, questions”177 including as a common language enlisting the support and insights of Chang to support a common philosophical foundation for the UDHR. Malik’s Thomism and Chang’s Confucianism shared the overlapping arguments for natural law and virtue ethics based on the duty to societal good via personal development in becoming good, as Thomas revised Aristotle’s virtues or excellences as beatitudes, and Confucius eveloped the correlative concept of Rén (page 40).178 What virtue and Rén were to their converging virtue ethics, natural law or t’ien-lie was to their political philosophy. One of the chief founders of Confucianism as China’s state religion and political philosophy during the Han Empire (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) was Tung Chung-shu (195-115 B.C.) who proposed to Emperor Wu-ti, “Why then are we so far behind the ancients in the peace and welfare of the people? Is it possible that there has been failure in following the Way (tao) of the ancients and... deviation from the Law (lei) of God?” (page 148).179 Similar to Aquinas ordering the political and ethical hierarchy based first on divine then natural then positive law, the Confucian Chung-shu argued that considering this lei embodied by the tao, 176

MORSINK, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, drafting, and intent. 177 Ibid. 178 BONEVAC and PHILLIP, Introduction to world philosophy. 179 CHOU, Chih-P’ing, “The natural law in the Chinese tradition.”

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“The government should make this a law of the empire which all officials must obey” (page 149). Hu Shih notes the deeper similarities between the East and the West conceptions of natural law between Confucianism and Thomistic-Aristotelianism by quoting Chung-shu’s intellectual descendent, Lü K’uen (1538-1618 A.D.): “There are only two things supreme in this world: one is lei, the other is political authority. Of the two, lei is the more supreme...even the Emperor cannot suppress it by his authority” (page 152). For Shu, whether in the East or West, natural law and its derivative natural right “have always played the historical role of a fighting weapon in mankind's struggle against the injustice and the tyranny of unlimited human authority” (page 153). The convergence is even more clear when comparing the Thomistic ethics influence of Jesus to “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12)180 and the Confucian ethics influence from the formulation, “What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others (Chinese: 絘荓膻蘽ఄ肳萘蓯蝸, XV.24).181 For Malik and Chang, family was the central societal unit and model for good government. So as chair of the final or Third Commission for the UDHR, Malik guided the final round of pointed debates which codified the final Declaration draft with the clearest reference to Thomistic natural law influence recognizing “the family the natural and fundamental group unit of society” (16.3). ‘Family’ is described as the ‘natural’ cradle for human rights and duties, being used six times throughout the UDHR, including in the opening line: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…” The entire Declaration, which would go on to serve as the foundational philosophical text upon which all subsequent UN documents would be based, provides a carefully constructed four layered Thomistic-Aristotelian justification for its protection of human rights and duties. This natural law foundation of the UN social contract was so fundamentally understood and shared by the early UN that its General Assembly President, Carlos Romulo (1898-1985 A.D.), one year after the UDHR’s release affirmed that the Declaration of all UN acts “has demonstrated most clearly... the tendency to work out a system of international law conforming as closely as possible to natural law” to ensure international peace (page 121)—even arguing that “may we not go even further and say that faithful adherence to Christian doctrine and the law of 180

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 181 CONFUCIUS, The analects.

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God has become a sine qua non of the survival of mankind?” (cf. page 123 of Romulo’s “Natural law and international law” presented in 1949 and published in the 1950 Volume 3 by Richard O’Sullivan and the University of Notre Dame within Natural Law Institute Proceedings).186 The ‘law’ (with its subsequent more complete articulation in the form of Wojtylan Thomistic personalism we will soon take up in greater depth) has fundamentally influenced the UN conception of rights and duties through its nearly century-long multicultural and interreligious dialogue seeking to “flesh out” this lofty vision of world peace. So we again take it up here to investigate whether it can provide a compelling common moral language to resolve such pressing issues as AI-GNR—which holds both more promise and more destructive capacity compared to the atomic weapons Romulo and the early UN feared—to understand this four-part foundation of the UDHR’s Thomistic-Aristotelian justification. First, human rights and duties are globally normative because they arise from ‘inherent’ human dignity which is therefore a priori to any social contract. Second, this dignity is articulated as a metaphysical assertion in the tradition of Thomistic-Aristotelianism, distinct from the liberal social contract tradition. The social contract demands citizens’ obedience to its laws because they are legally posited from the democratically supported social contract, arising from human reason as the ultimate sovereign of the contract. But the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition articulates citizen adherence to laws for they are meant to protect human dignity, which is ‘inherent,’ and thus given by a supra-human or super-natural authority as its sovereign before any political construction can be made from the societal organization of individuals. Third, the UDHR political philosophy describing an international order of peace is a metaphysical development of the initial metaphysical claim of inherent human dignity, a peace which is only possible by justly recognizing each person’s freedom ordered toward a higher good ultimately rather than simply toward individual preferences or self-defined ends. If freedom was conceived in the Declaration as a liberal conception (‘freedom from’), it would be a liberty that ultimately collapses into conflict with other individuals’ subjective freedoms seeking maximization of individual pleasure and avoidance of pain. The UDHR rather emphasizes liberty as a ‘freedom for’ the individual to pursue an objective freedom which is also subjectively experienced as the pursuit of a higher good ordering the person’s existence in accordance with natural law, a priori to any social contract’s positive law. And fourth, this metaphysical conception of global peace is grounded and relationally conceived in natural law derivative from a higher divine law (as inherent dignity flows from a higher supernatural source). This dignity belongs to the entire ‘human

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family’ extrapolated philosophically from the later Article 16 elaboration of the family as ‘the natural and fundamental group unit of society.’ In the face of the Holocaust which most directly prompted the UDHR, the Declaration drafters including Malik held as a commonly accepted philosophical understanding that the world’s nations with their diverse religious and philosophical belief systems could be politically united in their shared recognition of objective good and evil as more than simply human constructs (as the liberal tradition had defined them). The philosophical verification of this lies in Eleanor’s invocation of her husband’s insistence on religion freedom as one of the foundational human freedoms, appearing in the Preamble initially and Articles 2, 16, and 18 more fully. The liberal social contract, particularly elaborated by Rousseau and later Rawls, prohibits any religious belief system that makes a metaphysical claim to objective truth as a higher authority than the subjectively and thus democratically defined ‘truths’ of the modern liberal state answerable only to an ambiguously described ‘human reason’ which theoretically conforms to universal, unchanging norms. Yet this prohibition excludes nearly 9 in 10 people globally from public discourse, 182 as the world’s majority identifies with religions most principally with Christianity and Islam (with similar monotheistic beliefs with Judaism) which recognize a natural law flowing from the divine law given by a benevolent divine being (i.e. God, Allah [ௌ], YHWH [ʤʥʤʩ]) for the immediate and eternal good of each person. If the Declaration sees all humans as equal for each have “equal and inalienable rights” as members of “the human family” (Preamble) and thus are brothers and sisters, who is the Father? The Mother? From whom did those children come? The vast majority of humanity globally identifies their religious beliefs with this Higher Being (not the distant coldly rational watchmaker of the deist liberal social contractarians of the Enlightenment, but rather a parent bound by tender commitment to nurture and protect the children). The UDHR’s protection of religious freedom to logically follow from its premises cannot come from a social contract foundation—it must come from the only other philosophical tradition invoked in the Declaration, the Thomistic-Aristotelianism. Malik predicted at the onset of the UDHR and the UN that failure to grasp this deeper philosophical foundation amid its superficial social contract framework would ultimately doom the entire UN and global peace project:

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“The world factbook.”

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Chapter 2 The work on human rights is the one point in the total activity of the United Nations where the ultimate ideological issues are sharpest…Today men fight precisely because they disagree on their own interpretation of themselves. Man, you and I in person, our origin, our nature, our rights, our destiny: these are the great questions of the age…The challenge of human rights is still very great. What is supremely needed is vigorous moral leadership convinced and therefore convincing.183

This Arab-born, American Enlightenment-trained philosopher understood Socrates’ argument to Glaucon that “there will be no end to the troubles of states, or…of humanity itself, till…political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” And for Malik, natural law was the means for this convergence of power and philosophy for pluralistic peoples, the ethical development of his Thomistic-Aristotelianism that allowed the world’s nations to start with the social contract politically and work backwards with Thomism philosophically to ground human rights in objective truth, a notion rejected by the Enlightenment liberal theorists and their intellectual descendants down to the present age (including the dominant philosophy professor, Rawls, who would teach a few short decades later in the same Harvard University department where Malik obtained his PhD). Malik’s approach (of Thomist convergence in a social contract-dominated liberal world) evident in the UDHR draws from his lifelong ecumenical ties facilitating inter-religious and multicultural dialogue including with liberal secular thinkers. This approach was shaped by his multiple UN leadership positions, his key political role uniting disparate camps in the Lebanese Front during the Lebanese Civil War, and his term as President of the World Council on Christian Education, and his relationship to his brother the Catholic priest, Father Ramzi Habib Malik, whose lifework was ChristianJewish dialogue.184,185 Breaking with the social contract tradition with its emphasis on excluding non-secular belief systems (as they make claims to objective truth and an authority higher than democratic consensus), Malik articulated his unifying insistence underlying his personal philosophy when he presented the UDHR to the UN General Assembly for its vote. Humphrey 183

MALIK, Charles, “Talk on human rights,” (United States Chamber of Commerce in New York, November 4, 1949). 184 GLENDON, Mary Ann, The forum and the tower: How scholars and politicians have imagined the world, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt, 1 edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011). 185 UNITED NATIONS, “Dr. Charles Habib Malik (Lebanon),” General Assembly, 13th Session, accessed May 18, 2017, http://www.un.org/ga/55/president/bio13.htm.

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noted in the proceedings leading up to the UN vote how Malik directed “perhaps the most turbulent [committee] in the United Nations…[and] he got the Declaration through” (page 164).186 Through Malik’s ThomisticAristotelian emphasis on natural law, he politically succeeded in unifying support for the UDHR when he asserted to the General Assembly immediately preceding its vote that the Declaration represents a “composite synthesis” of all Western rights traditions in addition to Latin American and Asian belief systems (page 165). From India’s nondiscrimination and China’s duty ethics by way of Peng-Chun Chang to Latin America’s Bogotá Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, and from the Soviet Union’s economic rights to the US and UK’s political and civil rights notably Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms, Malik argued for the integral unity and compatibility in the UDHR of the world’s varying religious and philosophical belief systems, built on a “firm international basis wherein no regional philosophy or way of life was permitted to prevail” (page 165). By explicitly rejecting any ‘regional philosophy’ (including the Western political liberal social contract tradition), Malik appealed via the universal natural law to the world’s belief systems to “transform reality” and so make concrete the UN Charter’s pledge to global peace predicated on human rights previously left ambiguous and unarticulated until the UDHR. Malik’s political leadership during the intense deliberation on the UDHR, as humanity’s first universal articulation of a common moral code codified by the world’s nations, underscored how only a philosophy integral to human nature could unite humanity internationally. His successful maneuvering of the Declaration into ratification provided the historical proof of concept that his Thomistic natural law could politically and philosophically succeed where the otherwise dominant liberal social contract failed—to unite all nations, not just the nations which won WWII. His primary articulation of this natural law, as a Thomistic-Aristotelian, allowed him to synthesize the disparate belief systems of the eastern communitarian or duty-based belief systems with the western liberal social contract or rights-based tradition in its different adaptations (principally from the US, western Europe, and Russia). The philosophical and political efficacy of this Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law carried him through his later UN years as Lebanon’s delegate, through numerous Arab and American academic posts, and finally to his last university post carrying the name of his UDHR co-drafter with Malik serving as the Jacques Maritain Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Catholic 186

GLENDON, Mary Ann, A world made new: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York, NY: Random House, 2002).

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University of America (1981-1983 A.D.). It was Maritain’s ThomisticAristotelianism which had earlier fundamentally converted Malik’s political philosophy with his unique influence of the American liberalism, Kierkegaard’s existentialism, Heidegger’s phenomenology, and Islamic philosophy (page 72-73).187 And it was Maritain who helped spearhead the international effort to provide the philosophical substance underlying the UDHR in parallel with Malik’s drafting. Writing months before the UDHR was adopted, Maritain was selected to provide the “Philosophical Examination of Human Rights” and the introduction for the July 1948 UNESCO symposium of world experts on human rights.188 As it did 40 years later coordinating the world’s scientists to map the human genome, UNESCO capped by this symposium mapped the world’s competing belief systems and conceptions of the good which ultimately were integrated into the UDHR. This critical gathering collected the “most significant texts” of the world’s philosophers which ultimately advanced the Declaration to its final form (page 1). Maritain summarized the politically necessitated philosophical compromise by recounting a story from an earlier UNESCO meeting among these experts; one of the observers noted amazement that mutually exclusive ideologies somehow achieved consensus on a list of human rights: “we agree about the rights but on condition that no one asks us why” (page 1). Maritain continued by elaborating: The goal of UNESCO is a practical goal, agreement between minds…not on the affirmation of one and the same conception of the world, of man and of knowledge, but upon the affirmation of a single body of beliefs for guidance in action. No doubt, this is little enough, but it is…enough to enable a great task to be undertaken (page 2).

He conceded that the UDHR enumeration of rights was philosophically superficial but politically essential as a starting point. The horrific political results of WWII and the Holocaust served as the poignant reminders for the symposium attendees of the logical consequences of modern philosophy’s failures, from Descartes’ skepticism devolving politically and philosophically into epistemological anti-realism, ethical and political relativism, and

187

HANNSSEN, Jens and WEISS, Max, eds., Arabic thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an intellectual history of the Nahda (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 188 UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION, “Human rights: Comments and interpretations.”

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existential nihilism (page 1-4),189 which collectively amounted to humanity’s murder of reason as the collateral damage of executing God, thus condemning man to her/his nearly successful 20th century suicide in the form of the great world wars. Though the Declaration provided a minimalistic or summary political philosophy, it enabled the later expansion and fleshing out of its compressed system, by serving as the “beginning of changes which the world requires, the first condition precedent for the later drafting of a universal Charter of civilized life” (page 9). Maritain believed the UN’s minimalist beginning did not logically prohibit the possibility of a sustainable eventual global peace (it was a necessary but not sufficient spark for this goal, which ultimately would require extensive philosophical work to determine and defend the framework and foundation of this pluralistic system uniting the world’s belief systems). But how does this starting point enable this path? Maritain asserts in the same introduction that the answer is the natural law, accessible by and intelligible to diverse belief systems. He takes as a given the “division among minds does not permit of agreement on a common speculative ideology” (page 2). He then differentiates belief systems that are speculative from practical which in the symposium was “implicitly recognized today, in a live, even if not formulated state, by the consciousness of free peoples” (page 2). This practical ideology served as a “sort of common denominator, a sort of unwritten common law, at the point where in practice the most widely separated theoretical ideologies and mental traditions converge” (page 2). Thus enters in Maritain’s Thomistic-Aristotelian formulation of this “unwritten common” or natural law superseding philosophies specific to a region or people, for this common law is inherent to the nature of the entire human family. For evidence of this common denominator among belief systems, he distinguished between the rational and practical justification for such systems. Though he asserted that “my way of justifying belief in the rights of man…is the only way with a firm foundation in truth” (page 2), or a Thomistic metaphysical foundation, this did not prohibit him from “being in agreement on these practical convictions with people who are certain that their way of justifying them…in its theoretical dynamism, is equally the only way founded upon truth” (pages 2-3). Maritain believed it was “not reasonably possible to hope for more than this convergence in practice” rather than substance among pluralistic belief systems which are necessarily bound to theoretically disagree in their 189

SWEETMAN, Brendan, ed., The failure of modernism: The Cartesian legacy and contemporary pluralism, First Edition, American Maritain Association Publications (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1999).

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“justification and interpretation” (page 3). Yet this fundamental disagreement among experts was the precise evidence Maritain highlights to support humanity’s moral convergence as these disparate systems “for all practical purposes [are] identical” (page 3). What these experts and these belief systems could do, per this Thomistic personalist, was to “awake the conscience to knowledge of itself” of “spontaneous reason” of humanity’s “apprehension by experience which occurs apart from systems and on a different logical basis” (page 3). In Maritain’s other writings, he expounds on this natural law as distinct from the Enlightenment liberal thinkers (who envisioned humanity liberated from the shackles of Judeo-Christian faith and non-scientific/empirically verified metaphysical facts) with the deified human reason sovereign over other authorities, allowing each person to create their own subjective truth. For Maritain, the natural law is “universal and invariable…which follows from the first principle” to do good and avoid evil (page 90, 97-98).190 This law which supersedes and governs positive law enacted by political bodies is known connaturally (not rationally) by virtue of each person’s common human nature and is binding for right ethical and political actions due to the law’s participation in divine eternal law, reflecting man’s supernatural beginning and ultimate end in the hands of a divine reality. Maritain thus argued that individual human rights and societal duties to protect them are required for each person to reach her/his end or telos as her/his moral and spiritual fulfillment by joyful participation in this ultimate divine reality as eternal union with the divine. Thomistic-Aristotelian justice requires honoring the rights of each person so she/he can reach the perfection or fulfillment of her/his human nature. The UDHR was thus a small minimalistic snapshot of this larger vision as he believed the natural law was the common starting point of diverse peoples, building progressively as the free operation of the person’s intellect and free as it provides a growing clarity to what the good is and what it requires for right or virtuous actions (we will return shortly to the specific structure and justification of Maritain’s system). This conception of progressive connatural knowledge of the good and of good actions influenced Maritain’s symposium introduction encouraging the rational debates among the “main current of contemporary thought” which only “will perfect and broaden our views on the nature of basis of human rights” in “historical evolution” (page 5). He saw the pluralistic 190

MARITAIN, Jacques, Man and the state (L’homme et l'etat), trans. Robert Duval and France Duval (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951).

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debate justifying rights dividing all belief systems into one of two mutually exclusive camps, namely those who “accept, and those who …reject ‘Natural Law’ as the basis of those rights” (page 5). According to Maritain, the individual and communal telos for the human family and thus the possibility of a good human future would be decided by whether the dictates of natural law win out. For the first camp, rights are unchanging and given by human nature and for the second, rights are changing and given by human society which can vary as consensus on them changes—and this “[speculative] ideological contrast is irreducible and no theoretical reconciliation is possible” (page 5). He was convinced that the non-natural law camp (i.e. political liberalism and the social contract) believed but could not prove its position unlike his natural law camp which could prove its position through its metaphysical foundation; however, he saw both systems as expression of the same natural law and thus were equivalent ultimately as even the social contract was an attempt by its proponents to express the belief about the intuition to do good and avoid evil (while being ambiguous about what that good is). Yet this system’s attempt to reach out with its philosophical defense to the non-natural law camp would be foreign and unintelligible to it and so this “speculative ideological” chasm would remain between them—but the bridge politically could still be built even if either camp could not be pulled closer to each other. And the reality still remains that the natural law camp is universal and thus could contain the ‘regional’ social contract camp—but the inverse is not true. Maritain acknowledged that both camps may thus converge in practice to some degree on the natural law’s “fundamental rights” (of most importance and direct relationship to the natural law) and on positive law’s “primitive rights” (of most importance to the continuance of any social contract) (page 6). Yet the irreconcilable philosophical differences would remain in his view and thus necessitate the need to politically agree on the UDHR’s minimalist formulation of human rights and the “historical evolution” of humanity’s progressive moral consciousness (which carries with it the chance to bring this formulation to its ultimate perfection, while it in turn simultaneously helps ensure the basic rights necessary for each person’s perfection). Thus “the advocates of the liberal-individualist [system]…[and] the Communist… co-operative type of society might draw up similar, even identical, lists of Human Rights. But their exercise of these rights will differ” (page 8). A list of rights could be practically created by diverse philosophical systems. But eventually, this exercise will produce conflict among enumerated rights and individuals differentially exerting them. The

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source of these rights must therefore become the solution of this disagreement, as such an origin/solution is the “ultimate value whereon those rights depend and in terms of which they are integrated by mutual limitations” (page 8). Maritain held that this “scale of values” goes beyond the UDHR into a “true Charter” becoming “the key in which in their practical exercise in social life, the acknowledged rights of man must be harmonized” (page 8). And this Charter is not simply a nice ideal; it is a political and philosophical necessity. The UDHR seeks to define human rights. Yet Maritain passionately advocated for his world and the one which would inherit the UDHR that substantive agreement on the definitions of these rights let alone the more difficult agreement on their daily exercise must ultimately reach the level of “agreement on a scale of values” for which he had no more than “guarded optimism” (page 9) would ever materialize. Thus the UDHR for him was a promising start, an unfinished project, which he and the nations converged on against the evils of WWII and the Holocaust. The Socratic challenge would remain even after the monumental human achievement of the 1948 ratification of the UDHR bringing philosophy and political power a little closer together by bridging the natural and non-natural law camps. Yet there still remains the inevitably of “the troubles of states…of humanity itself” until the day Socrates envisioned and Maritain summarized when “political power and philosophy thus come[s] into the same hands” for “there is no other road to real happiness either for society or for the individual” (473d).191 So let us recap where we have gone so far in this chapter. The intertwined political (anthropologic, evolutionary biologic, and political economic) and philosophical trends initially brought us the realism of ThomisticAristotelianism articulating how and why man pursues her/his purpose and end of virtuous union with God as the supreme truth and beauty and good, a system rejected by the Scientific Revolution-fueled Enlightenment which itself was later rejected by the Nietzschean nihilism and the amoral ‘will to power’ of Hitler, thus triggering the liberal response of the US and UK driven social contract-based UN. The critique thus has been leveled that the Enlightenment project prefigured and made possible the political weaponization of philosophy and science (‘freed’ from the pre-modern Thomistic-Aristotelian teleological metaphysics with an objective justification of the good) to produce the evils of the Holocaust and the 100+ million massacred lives under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. So how can the same political philosophy that set the stage for such evils not repeat similar future horrors? (particularly given the increasing power of AI-GNR offering 191

PLATO, The republic of Plato: Second edition.

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unprecedented decentralized power to manipulate the very biology of humanity and the material universe’s physics and chemistry). Yes, the UN’s primary political and philosophical framework of the Rawlschampioned liberal social contract has produced historic international consensus on peace and human rights. But no, it cannot logically guarantee their future. A more substantive political philosophy and thus bioethics is required to refine the Rawlsian UN system articulated principally in its UDHR and UDBHR. Every building collapses without a foundation. So after focusing on the last 60+ years of the UN’s politically effective Rawlsian social contract framework, let us now investigate the defensibility of its subtle Thomistic-Aristotelian foundation and its implications for sustaining a refined and thus durable framework applicable for such pressing current ethical challenges as AI-GNR. From the work’s previously stated overarching objectives, the next two chapters will advance an implicated two-fold thesis before applying a refined Rawlsian UDHR and UDBHR framework to bioethically assess AIGNR as proof of concept of this refinement’s defensibility and utility (but not as definitive treatment of this topic so as not to become so broad the work becomes logically indefensible). The above section sought to establish the philosophical need for refining the UN Rawlsian system and the political need to attempt to accomplish this using its Thomistic foundation already implicitly accepted by the world’s nations in the UN Charter, UDHR, and UDBHR when they ratified these instruments. Based on the above arguments about the UDHR, we must now ask is it philosophically best to start with the Rawlsian framework and add into it a lighter version of Thomistic-Aristotelianism (made to be consistent with the strict belief system requirements of the Rawlsian system of ‘public reason’), or start with its Thomistic-Aristotelian foundation and refine the Rawlsian framework. The following two chapters respectively will test the philosophical superiority of both approaches. So we must also now ask why are we applying UDHR/UDBHR to AI-GNR? This is for five reasons including three political and two philosophical. Politically, (1) the world is united officially as a decentralized global human empire (even surpassing in various elements its regional states) by this one philosophy, as history shows the philosophies which have had the most lasting impact on humanity have followed the greatest empires. Platonic and Aristotelian realism was brought to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia through Alexander the Great’s Macedonian Empire by 323 B.C., and then throughout Europe with the Roman Empire, and then globally with the

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Catholic Church. 192 The ensuing secular liberalism and social contract of the Enlightenment thinkers including Descartes, Rousseau, and Kant who reacted to this realism then reached internationally with the British, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese empires which collectively at their height covered over 55% of the world’s land area before post-WWII decolonization.193,194 This liberal diffusion similarly was strengthened in the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions, including Napoléon’s acceleration of the modern era dominated by social contract-based democracies. During the modern era, this diffusion was deepened by the political vacuum created by WWII and the Cold War which left the US as the sole superpower exerting uncontested liberal capitalist international order following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.195 At the start of the Cold War, the UN was created as the first truly global empire uniting all nations under the common goal of peace, predicated on a US and UK-driven liberal social contract framework. This is the only political philosophy to which arguably every nation on Earth utilizes, and the only philosophy enshrined by the liberal capitalist world powers of the US and EU supported by the increasingly liberal capitalistic economic leanings of China and Russia as the world’s dominant political powers. But philosophically as noted above, the UN’s social contract framework is overdue for a robust refinement carrying it beyond simple democratic consensus on its social contract-espoused philosophical beliefs. (2) And politically, Thomistic-Aristotelianism is already written into the very structure of this shared UN system via Malik and Maritain, and thus is already accepted via its Charter, UDHR/UDBHR, and derivative documents by the world’s nations. (3) Lastly from the political realm, the global scope of AI-GNR requires an ethical framework with a comparably global character that is politically understood as non-partisan or favoring certain systems or states over others. For example, the historic Human Genome Project (HGP) required unprecedented scientific collaboration world-wide, which UNESCO 192

TURCHING, Peter, ADAMS, Jonathan, HALL Thomas D, “East-West orientation of historical empires and modern states,” Journal of World-Systems Research 12, no. 2 (August 26, 2006): 219–29. 193 TAAGEPERA, R, “Expansion and contraction patterns of large polities: Context for Russia,” International Studies Quarterly: A Publication of the International Studies Association 41, no. 3 (1997): 492–502. 194 BRZEZINSKI, Zbigniew, Strategic vision: America and the crisis of global power (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2013). 195 ZUBOCH, Vladislav M, A failed empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

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facilitated due to the scientific community’s respect for this UN organization’s long-standing, non-partisan international infrastructure predicated on human rights and global peace. AI-GNR builds on this genomic revolution and goes further by requiring even deeper collaboration not only within the genetic scientific community but also the AI and nanotechnology communities. During the Cold War with its bipolar political economic world order, dividing the earth between pro-democratic capitalistic American allies and pro-communist Soviet Union allies, the UN served as a powerful political counterweight successfully helping ensure the tension did not erupt into another open world war between the nucleararmed superpowers (page 102-103).196 Like with the 1958 UN Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL), the UN particularly with its Security Council provided effective diversion of direct armed conflict between the US and the Soviet Union through regional proxy wars among their allies, without global expansion of these conflicts as had occurred with WWI and WWII. The UN effectively prevented the worst excesses of conflict during the postWWII decolonization efforts (as the European ‘old-world’ powers including the UK and France relinquished their colonies) while concurrently managing the US-Soviet tension (by brokering international political stability due to its perceived non-partisan third party position). As the UN did for these competing parties, it is successfully managing the current political economic tensions between current or rising powers including the US, Russia, and China fighting for dominance in the world’s top economic sectors (energy, automobile, and healthcare) with their associated AI arms race fueling these sectors’ rapid transformations.197 As will be shown shortly, anthropological factors with man’s primitive drive for power influences the global political economic order which in turn largely determines the development of AI-GNR. It does not wait for philosophers to make up their minds about it, and even less so for the ethical recommendations eventually made for it. Modern healthcare and the resulting bioethical challenges are driven by these political economic forces, and the UN with its UDHR/UDBHR ethical framework has the best shot to rein in this technology’s unethical excesses (as it did for such global tensions and developments in the Cold War and decolonization periods).

196

David M. Malone, ed., The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century: Project of the International Peace Academy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004). 197 “Fortune Global 500 List 2016” (Fortune), accessed February 10, 2017, http://beta.fortune.com/global500/.

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(4) Philosophically, the world’s religions can converge on the premises of Thomistic Aristotelianism (as we will explore shortly with the natural law derivative from divine or eternal law) as can political liberalism’s social contract on its conclusions regarding the enumeration of rights. Of note, there is even growing interest and theological argument for and compatibility with natural law in relation to Protestantism despite prior critique to the contrary.198 The (5) final reason from a philosophical standpoint rests in the continuous development of Thomistic-Aristotelianism with a clear metaphysics, epistemology, and derivative political and ethical philosophies; modern philosophy rejected but not refuted this system. The UDHR/UDBHR framework as we have discussed above is a politically necessitated philosophical minimalism in its initial ethical framework. Hammarskjöld (1905-1961 A.D.), the Nobel laureate UN Secretary-General recognized as the standard for the UN’s highest position (killed during his 1961 Congo peacekeeping mission),199 articulated this by summarizing, “the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.”200 But there are only two ways to stop someone from going in a certain direction: external force or internal reason. As the fall of every empire attests, power is fleeting. And as the Enlightenment and modern era also bloodily demonstrate, the social contract of modern philosophy framing the UDHR/UDBHR is based on passing political consensus not substantive philosophy (with arguments grounded in metaphysics with subsequent premises governed by formal logic that progress to their logical conclusions). And that consensus is unraveling as politics shift. So if the UN is meant to help save the world politically from at least the immediate hell of global cataclysmic conflict, particularly one increasingly threatened by AI-GNR, then its superficial philosophical framework requires resurrection by its Thomistic foundation that can refine and sustain it for the ages. This can thus at least make probable not just possible the immediate ‘heaven’ of global peace that includes an ethical application of AI-GNR. So let us test the possibility of this ThomisticAristotelian refinement, diving now into the next thesis by first better understanding and appreciating the Rawlsian approach to the social contract 198

VANDRUNEN, David, “Natural Law for Reformed Theology: A Proposal for Contemporary Reappropriation,” Journal of Reformed Theology 9 (2015): 117-30. 199 WIGGLESWORTH, Robin, “The road to redemption,” Financial Times , January 31, 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/613c7dac-6adf-11e2-9670-00144feab49a. 200 HAMMARSKJÖLD, Dag, “Address by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld at University of California Convocation,” (Convocation, Berkeley,CA, May 13, 1954), http://ask.un.org/faq/14623.

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as the recognized modern champion of its defense.

2.2. Introduction …The vital politics of our own century looks rather different. It is neither delimited by the poles of illness and health, nor focused on eliminating pathology to protect the destiny of the nation. Rather, it is concerned with our growing capacities to control, manage, engineer, reshape, and modulate the very vital capacities of human beings as living creatures. It is, I suggest, a politics of ‘life itself’ (page 3).201

Medicine’s technological advances in the past century have hurled this discipline into the third millennium, to the point that it is decreasingly focused on prevention or healing of disease and increasingly centered on manipulation or customization of human life. Nikolas Rose (1947-present), Director of the BIS Centre at the London School of Economics and a leading international authority in the emerging field of contemporary molecular biopolitics, analyzes the effect of neurotechnologies, neurogenetics, psychopharmacology, and other brain sciences on politics and other social sectors. Rose argues that societies worldwide have entered a new age of “biological citizenship” (pages 795-796).202 Rose asserts that these new brain sciences continue to have a profound impact in this new age, similar to the 20th century psychological conceptions of persons. The question of personhood remains eminently important yet elusive, particularly in this modern age of medical and technological advances. The growing sub-discipline in philosophy of neuroethics and the emerging phenomenon of biopolitics emphasize the need for a unifying account of moral intuitions in a robust system of ethics (amid societies with multiple religious, moral, and philosophical systems) including those developing in bioethics as a sub-discipline of applied philosophy. Modern bioethics takes as a defining case study of this discipline the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.203 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document in “The Tuskegee Timeline” how the US Public Health Service researchers 201

ROSE, Nikolas, The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century (Princeton University Press, 2009). 202 LOVAAS, Jessica, “Book review of The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century,” Journal of Biosocial Science 39, no. 05 (2007): 795–96. 203 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION, “US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee,” USA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013.

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denied 600 African American men the ability to make informed consent as they were unknowingly studied for the natural history of syphilis without being offered the penicillin treatment. This 40-year experiment ended after a July 1972 Associated Press story prompted the Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs to form an advisory panel and review the study. The panel concluded the Tuskegee Experiment was “ethically unjustified,” and the US government reached a $10 million out-of-court settlement with the families of the study participants in 1974. This study remains a key example for modern bioethics of an inappropriate research method, namely, denying study participants or patients informed consent about the relevant risks for the treatment they receive in a research project. Modern ethicists and medical professionals regardless of their religion, creed, or moral system, largely share the conclusion that it is morally unjustified to use a person as a means to another’s ends if there is not sufficient consent by and compensation or good achieved for the person used as a means. The Tuskegee Experiment provides evidence that people within pluralist societies can share certain moral judgments that appeal to their common moral consciousness regardless of their doctrine. Yet modern philosophers struggle with producing a systematic account and justification for these common moral convictions across the doctrinal divides and political borders. One pioneering system has emerged in the past half century that is transforming the field of political philosophy and other philosophical and legal disciplines, persisting as one of the modernity’s most dominant accounts of justice and the social contract: John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness. Rawls, a former Harvard University philosophy professor, constructed this system describing a political conception of justice to more accurately articulate common moral convictions in a pluralist society uniting as a state. His proposed system in Theory of Justice (1971) refined in Political Liberalism (1993) sought to be a compelling alternative to the classical systems of Aristotelian, Christian (articulated by Augustine [354430 A.D.] and Aquinas), and classical utilitarianism (articulated by Bentham). Rawls breaks from these traditions that argue for or assume one reasonable and rational conception of the good, which all citizens who are reasonable and rational recognize (page 134).204 Rawls adheres rather to political liberalism that asserts a different anthropological understanding of man. 204

RAWLS, John, Political liberalism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005).

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This new approach assumes “many conflicting reasonable comprehensive doctrines with their conceptions of the good” (page 135). These doctrines, according to Rawls, will inevitably result from people’s full rationality and the exercise of their practical reason under free institutions. The question then becomes are there common intuitions that can unify individuals, amid the reasonable pluralism of incommensurable comprehensive doctrines, to allow for fair cooperation in a democratic state? This cooperation will be possible when the goal of political liberalism is realized—describing the necessary conditions for public justification of citizens’ shared moral convictions on foundational political questions (page xix). Despite this system’s worldwide influence and robustness, it is increasingly vulnerable (to philosophical critique) and ineffective (practically with how it attempts to preserve pluralism while concurrently excluding multiple belief systems with objective conceptions). Rawls attempts to preserve his political conception of the person as a free and equal citizen, amid biotechnological advances—that question if there a distinction between a human person and merely a human organism—as neuroscience produces biopolitics, neuroethics, biocapital, and further disciplines and theoretical concepts with increasingly prioritization or total reduction of the person to material elements. Both to contend with Rawls’s critics and to anchor his profound system in the neurobiological era (accounting for its material insights reducing philosophy to the science), this chapter will investigate a new model of synthesizing the Rawlsian political conception of justice within his theory of justice with Wojtyla’s robust conception of the human person (compatible to the modern anthropology and biology). Born in Nazioccupied Poland, Wojtyla developed his Personalism as a response to what he perceived was a disintegration of societies’ understanding of the person. His system integrates a phenomenological account of a metaphysics of being with modern psychological insights into the person. True to his use of contemporary empirical sciences to strengthen his conclusions, this thesis will import significant current neurobiological discoveries to complement the Wojtylan conception of the person as it is introduced into Rawls’s system. This modification comes in the wake of many Rawlsian critics arguing that Rawls’s system rests on an ineffective circular argument (i.e. citizens with plural comprehensive doctrines will form overlapping consensus on political principles of justice because they can be affirmed as political principles of justice, separate from any one doctrine). Yet the vast formative influence of Rawls’s theory of justice on political philosophy, legal philosophy, and bioethics reflects a growing trend of bioethicists influenced

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by the Rawlsian-like tradition. This thesis will explore if this Wojtylan modification of Rawls’s system can produce an adequately robust improvement on his system, which arguably remains one of the most dominant modern philosophical systems. The purpose of exploring such a modification in this chapter is to eventually generate substantive dialogues on the metaphysical nature of justice, human persons, and other age-old philosophical questions—while simultaneously producing non-arbitrary normative bioethical conclusions (specifically in the larger case of this book for the UN framework applied to AI-GNR) shared by citizens in plural societies united as states entering the neurobiological era that concurrently faces the AI-driven existential crisis of our human identity.

2.3. Rawlsian system of political justice 2.3.1. Rawlsian conception of justice as fairness Rawls’s adaptation of political liberalism differentiates his system from the traditionally dominant system in English-speaking moral philosophy, utilitarianism (page xiv).205 Because no systematic moral conception historically could adequately counter utilitarianism, people were left to choose between utilitarianism and rational intuitionism (referring to moral intuition without justification about the validity of a particular intuition) (page xv). Rawls thus proposes his theory of justice as fairness in the social contract philosophical tradition. Assuming political liberalism in a democratic society united into a state, he argues that this theory among other moral traditions is “the best approximation to our considered convictions of justice” (page xv). This wide applicability for citizens, regardless of their doctrinal differences, allows it to be the most fitting foundation in a pluralistic democratic state according to Rawls (page xv). The theory of justice primarily seeks to articulate the necessary conditions for a just and stable state of individuals from different comprehensive religious and moral doctrines. Rawls begins this search with two fundamental objectives: (1) determine “the most acceptable political conception of justice for specifying the fair terms of social cooperation between citizens,” and (2) “the grounds of toleration for fellow citizens with conflicting comprehensive doctrines” (page 4).

205

Ibid.

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2.3.2. Two principles of justice Rawls proposes his theory of justice as fairness to achieve the above by describing how fundamental societal institutions can secure free and equal citizens’ liberty and equality through the theory’s two principles of justice that regulate the institutions. The second principle is subordinate to the first principle: (a) Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties which is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value (page 5).206

The second or ‘difference’ principle consists of two segments: (b) Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society (page 6).

Rawls asserts that these two principles function to regulate institutions by safeguarding citizens’ basic liberties, rights, and opportunities in addition to the “institutional guarantees.” These two principles constitute the theory of justice as fairness that serves as the “fundamental organizing idea” for the various ideas and principles latent in public culture (i.e. the common principle that opposes the Tuskegee experiment coordinators denying informed consent to the test subjects). Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness thus is the political instrument directing fair cooperation among citizens with incommensurable comprehensive doctrines. Think of an out-of-state police captain is transferred to a new city to solve its rampant road rage by coordinating the new division of officers traffic. The traffic consists of drivers strongly biased to their own community and hostile to drivers from outside their community. The local drivers are the citizens in a pluralistic society who share the common consensus to obey the directives of the captain’s officers (likened to the theory of justice), so they may dwell in an ordered community of fair traffic laws which ensure safety and stability as they pursue their travel goals.

206

Ibid.

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2.3.3. Rawlsian overlapping consensus Rawls states that his innovative construct of the “original position” describes (1) his conception of the individual and (2) “its companion conception of social cooperation” with the justice principles of “fair terms of social cooperation” (page 304, PL). Rawls’s conception of the person follows from his constructivist conception of political justice which he contrasts with a comprehensive moral doctrine, like the system of Kant (pages 90-91).207 This political constructivism produces key features of Rawls’s account of the individual: belonging to the political state (which is a trans-generational fair system of social cooperation) and possessing two moral powers to create a conception of the good and a sense of justice (page 93). Fair terms of social cooperation must be constructed, not from comprehensive doctrines, but from principles of justice formulated through the general consent of free and equal citizens—with plural conceptions of the good—according to a fair procedure able to produce those principles. True to his reasonable pluralism commitment (that citizens cannot cross their doctrinal divides to agree on a common moral authority), Rawls thus rejects any belief that citizens in a democratic state can agree on a common moral authority (page 97). Further, the individuals in the society that become citizens in the state do not have the metaphysical depth of Aquinas—they are individuals but not unique. Political constructivism articulates the order of political values produced from principles of practical reason and political justice, if considered with the constructivist conception of the state and persons, in addition to its procedure (page 95).208 This constructivist alternative to a comprehensive doctrine serves to organize values that proceed from principles of practical reason to principles of political justice (Rawls thus attempts to prevent this constructivism from opposing any comprehensive doctrine). Invoking the policeman metaphor noted earlier, the captain transferred from out-of-state as her assumed impartiality to the various communities will maximize the probability that the citizens will agree to her directives that regulate—rather than oppose—any driver. The constructivist political conception seeks to regulate citizens with different comprehensive doctrines in terms of fair social cooperation, rather than directly opposing any such doctrine by being explicitly linked to a comprehensive doctrine which may come into conflict with another.

207 208

Ibid. Ibid.

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This constructivism of the political conception of the human person and procedures, able to articulate principles of justice, allows the existence of Rawls’s original concept of ‘overlapping consensus.’ Citizens remain, according to Rawls, in a state of simple pluralism in which they can achieve constitutional consensus over fundamental liberal principles of political justice, such as procedures for democratic elections to regulate political competition (i.e. the principles articulated in the US Constitution) (page 158).209 Rawls emphasizes the importance of certain conceptions of the person and the state, in a political context, by asserting that principles of political justice must be grounded in these conceptions of person and the state lest public discourse and ultimately constitutional consensus become increasingly superficial and ultimately evaporate (page 158). Rawls utilizes moral psychology to propose a further dimension of his political conception to account for the transition from constitutional consensus to overlapping consensus. Moral psychology, according to Rawls, describes how citizens can eventually develop trust in each other as co-workers developing an arrangement of institutions and procedures produced by the political principles of justice and thus fair terms of social cooperation. He asserts that citizens possess the capacity for desiring to act according to political principles of justice, and they will assist with the procedures and institutions produced by these principles if they believe such arrangements are just and other citizens will similarly assist. Trust among citizens grows as they clearly observe each other’s intention to assist in the fair political arrangement, as well as more citizens recognize the fundamental institutions constructed to ensure their basic values, derived from their comprehensive doctrines. The shift is formalized as citizens move from a modus vivendi of constitutional consensus to overlapping consensus and thus accept the liberal principles articulated in the constitution as components of their own comprehensive system. These principles ensure fundamental political liberties and rights, create democratic electoral procedures, and resolve social policy issues. Rawls repeats his emphasis on a shared political conception of the human person and the state—articulated by his theory of justice as fairness—to attribute the depth of the overlapping consensus to these and other incorporated principles that are grounded in a political conception of justice. The breadth of overlapping consensus follows from democratic procedures and the political values articulated by his first and second principle in the form of guaranteed equality of liberties, rights, and 209

Ibid.

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opportunities (pages 162-163).210

2.3.4. Rawlsian original position Rawls develops overlapping consensus as the organizing principle for the structure of the state, making this structure “the primary subject of justice” (page 35).211 He then introduces the construct of the original position in order to determine the principles that will constitute this structure (page 35). Representatives of persons in the democratic state begin from this original position behind the veil of ignorance as a first step producing overlapping consensus on an impartial political conception of justice in a democratic state with reasonable pluralism. The original position unites the political principles of justice with Rawls’s conception of the person and fair social cooperation. The political conception of individuals in the context of the original position involves the two powers of moral personality which Rawls describes as “the capacity to be reasonable” and “the capacity to be rational” (page 305).212 A person is reasonable to the extent that he or she has the capacity for a conception of justice and can follow the fair terms of social cooperation (page 305). A person is rational to the extent that he or she possesses the capacity to rationally conceive of the good (according to their comprehensive doctrine), and then situate himself or herself in the original position as a rationally autonomous representative of citizens in the plural state (page 305). As such, the representative will consent to principles he or she believes are most appropriate for the persons that he or she represents as those principles will ensure individuals’ self-defined conceptions of the good they pursue (page 305). Because the two moral powers of the person are described in the original position, Rawls reduces his conception of the person to this position which “represents the full conception of the person” (page 305). A person equal to all others in the original position can thus proceed as a societal representative with the limited knowledge of certain key principles. Rawls’s concept of the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing other such elements as the specific goals and attachments for their conception of the good, their abilities and psychological traits, and the social positions of the persons they represent. The representative is thus expected to choose the 210

Ibid. Ibid. 212 Ibid. 211

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social arrangement that can best “advance the determinate good” of the persons in the state they represent (page 307).213 For example, a college professor and a homeless elderly man who place themselves in the original position will, to the extent that they are persons in the Rawlsian sense with the two moral powers, both consent to the principles of justice able to produce the fairest social arrangement possible. Both the professor and vagabond in the original position will chose this arrangement because they do not know their social status among other traits, or if they are the professor or the vagabond. The construct of the original position will thus facilitate production of the best social arrangement for even the worst off in a state due to a person in the original position existing as an impartial representative of the state’s citizens. Because the representatives are limited by the veil of ignorance in knowing a person’s individual good, Rawls proposes his conception of primary goods as a concise enumerated list critical to the realization of the persons’ moral powers and her/his ability to pursue her/his conception of the good (page 307).214 He proposes five primary goods: (1) basic liberties, such as freedom of conscience, needed for the proper use of the two moral powers; (2) freedom of travel and occupation; (3) positions of responsibility; (4) income and wealth; (5) and “the social bases of respect” crucial for pursuing ends with confidence (pages 308-309). Rawls asserts that the appropriate measure of a state’s fundamental structure is how effectively societal institutions guarantee these primary goods, judged by the standard of his two principles of justice as fairness (page 309).

2.3.5. Rawlsian political conception of the human person Rawls omits any account of a metaphysical doctrine of the nature of person that is prior to his or her political existence as a citizen of a democratic state with reasonable pluralism. Rawls attempts to keep his system consistent while accounting for a freestanding political conception of justice rather than a metaphysical doctrine derivative of or a component of a comprehensive doctrine that can then conflict with other doctrines. He thus argues for a strictly political conception of the person through her/his own understanding of herself/himself as a free citizen within a constitutional democratic regime. This understanding of the citizen being free is conceived in three respects: (1) citizens as persons possess the moral power to have a 213 214

Ibid. Ibid.

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conception of the good and pursue it; (2) citizens as persons believe they can progress toward their conceptions of the good by justifiably making claims on their institutions (i.e. a citizen making a claim on the judicial system for him or her not to be sentenced to legal punishment without a fair trial); and (3) citizens as persons are responsible to adjust their ends to the means available to them in exchange for their contributions to the social arrangement according to the fair terms of social cooperation (pages 30, 3233).215 Rawls describes the political conception of persons as free in terms of claims (2) because they are “self-authenticating sources of valid claims” (page 32).216 Citizens, by virtue of their political identities as persons, believe they have the right to pursue their conception of the good by making claims on their institutions if necessary. These claims exist independent from the duties described from the political conception of justice (page 32). Yet a weakness of this conception is observed in the extreme case that Rawls gives of human slaves. Rawls argues that slaves, since they are slaves, cannot be counted as sources of claims. Rather, they are “socially dead” because they are not recognized by the state as persons capable of making their own claims to the state, such as the claim for them not to be forced into labor without proper compensation. The prohibition of this maltreatment in Rawls’s conception is possible through the claims from the slaveholders or from the state’s general interests. Rawls thus trades the risk of denying certain members of the state basic liberties with the flexibility of a shared political conception of justice needed in his view to realize social unity (page 304). The political conception of persons in Rawls system functions primarily to avoid depositing social unity in a shared conception of the good through a comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrine. He tries to accomplish this by rooting political conceptions of justice (as the basis of overlapping consensus in a democratic state of reasonable pluralism) in the political conception of the person and its accompanying conception of social cooperation, proper to persons as free citizens capable of making claims to the state. Fair terms of social cooperation including basic liberties and their prioritization can thus be accounted. This is due to the twin ideas of the political conception of the person and its derivative idea of social cooperation (among these persons which necessitates these basic liberties)

215 216

Ibid. Ibid.

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as regulating organizational principles for the state (page 304).217 Rawls is concerned with the functioning of such a political system through use of the principles, not the actual content of the principles so long as they facilitate proper functioning of overlapping consensus and fair terms of social cooperation.

2.3.6. Contradiction in Rawls’s lack of metaphysical doctrine of persons This political conception of the person described above plays a foundational functional role helping realize Rawls’s construction of the political conception of justice as the basis of social unity and stability through overlapping consensus. However, he avoids providing any justification for his presupposition that there is no metaphysical doctrine of the nature of persons in his political conception of justice. Though Rawls appeals to political constructivism rather than a comprehensive doctrine, he still cannot escape his implicit metaphysical account of the human person as a reasonable and rational, free and equal citizen. Rawls responds to this criticism from Paul Hoffman (1952-2010 A.D.) by two arguments: (1) his theory of justice as procedural fairness has no metaphysical doctrine about the nature of person “distinctive and opposed to other metaphysical doctrines” and (2) even if a presupposed doctrine were incorporated, it could be so general that one could “not distinguish between the metaphysical views—Cartesian, Leibnizian, or Kantian” (page 29).218 He assert that his theory of justice with its basic components— particularly his constructs of the political conception of persons and social cooperation, reasonable pluralism, the political conception of justice, overlapping consensus, and the original position—does not require a metaphysical doctrine of the human person central to his conception of justice. Though he cites this as the reason for supposedly not providing an explicit adoption and defense of a metaphysical doctrine (including one that asserts there is no necessary metaphysical account of persons), he seemingly undermines his premise in discussing: (1) political constructivism’s dialogue with Kant, (2) the political conception of the person, and (3) social cooperation. The first contradiction is seen when Rawls argues that principles of practical reason—necessary for the fair procedure of achieving 217 218

Ibid. Ibid.

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overlapping consensus on principles of political justice—“derive from nowhere else” but in the person’s “moral consciousness informed by practical reason” (page 101).219 He explicitly accepts this premise from Kant’s argument which at its core involves a distinctive metaphysical doctrine. This doctrine of the person or rational agent (using Kantian terminology) possesses a moral consciousness that is separate from a strictly political conception. This metaphysical premise is assumed by Rawls in his discussion of the political conception of the person when he discusses the second respect of citizens’ understanding of their freedom. In this context, Rawls highlights only the political element of the person’s capacity for self-authenticating from her/his moral consciousness as an aspect of her/his subjectivity as persons. Rather than discuss moral consciousness as the source of the person’s understanding of her/his subjectivity, Rawls describes the person politically as a citizen who applies his or her capacity for self-authenticating to produce valid claims to institutions in the state, which she/he may deem necessary for the pursuit of her/his conception of the good (page 32).220 The (3) final contradiction in Rawls’s statement that he does not explicitly adopt a metaphysical doctrine (of the person in his political conception of the person) resides in his discussion of social cooperation. He discusses three elements of social cooperation: (a) publicly recognized procedures of justice as fairness guide cooperation as citizens who accept the appropriate regulatory function of the procedures outlined by the political conception of justice; (b) cooperation involves fair terms of social cooperation which embody the political conception of justice and so require reciprocity from the citizens who reasonably accept the fair terms with the understanding that others will also; (c) and cooperation is explained from the standpoint of each citizen's’ comprehensive doctrine in terms of the “rational advantage” or good each is pursuing (page 16).221 The first two elements describe the person in a political context in addition to how a citizen can maximize societal unity through toleration of others from different comprehensive doctrines. Yet the (c) final element roots this conception of the citizen in the metaphysical premise that citizens are pursuing a good (or multiple goods in the context of reasonable pluralism) by virtue of the fact that they are persons according to his political conception of the person. This premise illustrates the motivation of citizens who engage in social cooperation so they may continue their pursuit of their good with the assurance of security, 219

Ibid. Ibid. 221 Ibid. 220

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created by the existence of the fair terms of social cooperation. Rawls’s emphasis of citizens’ social cooperation (so they can pursue their conception of the good) can be illustrated in the policeman-traffic metaphor as the direction that the cars are headed. Knowing the direction is relevant for the policeman because this knowledge allows her/him to successfully direct the vehicles depending on where the traffic flow is moving (she does not need to know their final destination, only that they have such which leads them in a certain direction when she/he interacts with them at the intersection). Describing a driver’s destination strictly in the context of her nature as a driver does not take seriously her nature also as a person, with a destination and direction that can be unique for and uniquely identified by each person as a person. In the context of Rawls’s system, his account of the citizen solely as a person in the political sense—whose pursued conception of the good should be considered in the political arena of social cooperation—does not adequately account also for the metaphysical description of the person’s good serving as the object of her/his pursuit by virtue of her/his identity as a person.

2.3.7. Necessity of metaphysical modification of Rawls Rawls’s discussion of the political conception of the person illustrates that a metaphysical doctrine is either explicitly proposed or implicitly included in his attempt to develop a political conception of justice (with the accompanying political conception of the person and social cooperation among persons). Yet the section above explored the contradictions in how Rawls failed to produce a political conception that “does not provide a specific religious, metaphysical, or epistemological doctrine beyond what is implied by the political conception itself” (page 144).222 Rawls thus falls subject to a similar argument he leveled against utilitarianism, “conflating all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator. Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons” (page 24).223 By seeking to produce a strictly political conception of justice in a democratic state of reasonable pluralism, Rawls’s foundational premise of the political conception of the person ignores the distinction between persons as unique individuals, in favor of viewing them strictly as free and equal political entities (i.e. citizens) with comprehensive doctrines.

222 223

Ibid. RAWLS, A theory of justice.

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Rawls carries over into his political conception of justice this lack of distinction between persons as persons in his discussion of overlapping consensus, contrasting it with its earlier developmental stage of ‘modus vivendi.’ This Latin term for ‘mode of living’ describes a contingent peace exemplified by a treaty compromise between two nations with competing interests. When it is no longer in the interest of one party to uphold the treaty, they readily break it once the balance of interests among the parties is offset. The overlapping consensus differs from this modus vivendi by supposedly remaining stable despite the division of power and interests among citizens from incommensurable doctrines. Commonly shared political conceptions of justice, the person, and the state to which the person belongs must be shared by citizens across doctrinal divides, according to Rawls, for the overlapping consensus to be realized. When citizens from competing doctrines agree to these principles through a fair procedure, they move from a modus vivendi to an overlapping consensus by affirming the political principles based on principles within their own doctrines. Citizens thus should adopt these political principles, seeing them not solely as external principles of fair terms of social cooperation but also as internal components in their own systems that at least do not oppose their doctrines’ other principles (page 147).224 Rawls distinguishes between modus vivendi and overlapping consensus on the basis of the consensus possessing two elements: (a) a political conception of justice as a moral conception that is its object, and (b) its ability to be ratified on the moral grounds of principles, arising from each citizen’s moral consciousness informed by practical reason which generates political principles of justice in addition to the conception of the person and the state to which he or she belongs. However, Rawls risks his overlapping consensus devolving into this modus vivendi because of the lack of a metaphysical account of the person in his political conception of justice. His resulting political liberalism elicits the criticism of his famous British opponent, John Gray (1948-present), who argues that his liberalism is a “species of anti-political legalism” in its attempt to defend strictly political principles of justice without reliance on any philosophical system (page 16).225 Robert B. Talisse (1970-present) terms such an attempt as “chimerical” (page 456).226

224

RAWLS, Political liberalism. GRAY, John, Two faces of liberalism (New York, NY: The New Press, 2002). 226 TALISSE, Robert B., “Twoဨfaced liberalism: John Gray’s pluralist politics and 225

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An example of this chimera is Rawls’s distinction between modus vivendi and overlapping consensus which citizens supposedly can achieve based on their adoption of the political principles rather than just the convergence of interests in a modus vivendi. Yet citizens must appeal to their comprehensive doctrines—not simply a political conception of justice—in order to adopt the political principles on which the consensus is constructed. The religious, philosophical, or moral doctrines of the citizens thus are necessary for the translation of a modus vivendi into an overlapping consensus which provides the most stability and social union in Rawls’s conception of a democratic state (over competing philosophical traditions) which define necessary conditions of social stability. Rawls grounding his theory of justice on a political conception of justice, independent of any comprehensive doctrine, draws the criticism of other philosophers including Joel Feinberg (1926-2004 A.D.). He investigated the limitation of Rawls’s commitment to a purely political conception of justice as insufficient to justify civil disobedience. Feinberg concludes that Rawls’s political conception of justice fails when compared to “supplementary principles to guide the individual conscience” in a state already possessing just institutions (page 415).227 The criticism of Feinberg, Talisse, and Gray among others raises the question whether Rawls can consistently defend liberal principles (i.e. liberties and rights) without an explicit commitment to a philosophical doctrine (or pluralist doctrines in the case of Gray).

2.3.8. Replacement of Rawls’s latent metaphysical doctrine: heart metaphor Rawls’s profoundly influential justice as fairness grounding his formidable defense of the social contract has provoked extensive investigation how his system may be modified to ensure its continuation (given the above logical weaknesses of it). Given the resurgence of global interest in natural law and possible inroads in relation to the dominant UN-associated rights-duties system and Thomistic personalist natural law in particular, such a Rawlsian revision may be promising. The question yet becomes whether Rawls’s political conception of justice in his theory of justice can remain consistent with his commitment to political liberalism if it is modified through a robust metaphysical conception of the person such as that proposed by the 20th the reinstatement of Enlightenment liberalism,” Critical Review 14, no. 4 (2000): 441–58. 227 FEINBERG, Joel, “Rawls and intuitionism,” Reading Rawls 108 (1975): 122– 24.

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century Polish philosopher, Wojtyla. His conception is a candidate for this modification because it synthesizes the phenomenological method of Max Scheler (1874-1928 A.D.) to allow broad access to conclusions produced by Aristotelian-Aquinas metaphysics of being through Wojtyla’s unique Thomistic personalism. Such a modification could potentially answer Rawls’s critics who assert that he cannot escape from a metaphysical foundation or appeal to philosophical doctrines to consistently defend the liberal principles discussed in his theory of justice while still producing the conclusions about political consensus in moral pluralism that Rawls seeks. Since the discussion of Hoffman’s suggestion to Rawls, it remains questionable if Rawls could deny claims that he does not commit to a metaphysical doctrine for his political conception of the person by denying any such doctrine. This lack of doctrine restricts Rawls to only assert a political conception of the person as a free and equal citizen. As such, he cannot take seriously the distinction between persons as persons in a Rawlsian democratic state of political liberalism assuming reasonable pluralism. Another metaphysical doctrine—namely the Wojtylan conception of the human person—will be explored as a possible replacement for Rawls’s inadequate metaphysical doctrine to preserve Rawls’s larger system. The proposed mechanism seeks to revise Rawls at the heart of his theory of justice: (1) replacing his conception of the person with the Wojtylan conception in the construction of the political conception of the person; (2) modifying the political conception of justice according to this new metaphysics-informed political conception of the person and by extension the state in which the person belongs; (3) subsequently revising the overlapping consensus of citizens from incommensurable comprehensive doctrines in a democratic state according to this new political conception; (4) positioning the Wojtylan conception of the person in the original position behind the veil of ignorance; (5) and thus modifying the enumerated list of primary goods and impartial fair terms of social cooperation that is informed by the Wojtylan conception. This replacement with Wojtylan Thomistic personalism translates the policeman-traffic metaphor into a modified metaphor of the heart in place of the policeman, and the circulatory system of blood vessels and arteries replacing the traffic. This new metaphor will be used to track the Wojtylan metaphysical conception of the person potentially breathing new (sustainable) life into the system of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness assuming political liberalism as it enters the neurobiological and AI era.

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2.4. Wojtylan Personalism doctrine 2.4.1. Introduction of the individuality of the person The investigation the Wojtylan conception of the person begins with a historical discussion of his approach. Giovanni Reale (1931-2014 A.D.), the renowned Italian historian of philosophy detailed in his work, Il Pensiero Occidentale dalle Origini ad Oggi I (Western Thought from its Origins to Today), the key questions central to Wojtyla in the Neo-platonic Plotinus (Ancient Greek: ȆȜȦIJ૙ȞȠȢ, 204-207 A.D.): Plotinus, though he teaches the necessity of drawing ourselves from external things into the inner part of ourselves…so as to find the truth, nevertheless speaks of the…interiority of man only in the abstract, or rather in general, rigorously depriving the soul of the individuality (page 333).228

Plotinus shares Rawls’s lack of a robust metaphysical account of the human person, implicit in Rawls’s system that solely describes a political conception of the human person as a citizen with basic liberties and rights. According to Reale, this de-emphasis of man’s individuality among mankind in Plotinus comes at the cost of “ignoring the concrete question of personality” (page 333). The American philosopher and personalist, John F. Crosby (1944-present), asserts that the Plotinus model of disregarding man’s concreteness as an individual and subjective being runs throughout classical Greek philosophy, surfacing in a paradox set out in Plato’s Republic. Though the text is pregnant with a detailed analysis of the human soul amid the search for a just city, the book includes the Book V proposal to dispose of newborns with disabilities which appears to conflict with commonly shared moral intuitions including in that time—particularly about the importance of each person as an individual deserving of societal protection by virtue of their unique identity as an individual human (page 61).229 Modern scholars and leaders grapple with the millennia-old questions about man’s nature simultaneously with rapid medical advances (including AIGNR which we will examine in depth later) and mounting international competition among dominant states which drive them and thus increasingly de-emphasize the unique identity of each person as a person rather than 228 REALE, Giovanni, Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi, ed. Dario Antiseri, vol. 1 (Milan, Italy: La Scuola, 1985). 229 CROSBY, John F., The selfhood of the human person (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).

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simply a consumer of health goods or generic member of a patient population. These developments accelerate the confusion of pluralistic corporations, governments, and United Nations councils over which technologies should they politically unify over. And so the above global context means the concreteness of an individual man and woman is just as elusive as in Plotinus’ day.230

2.4.2. Historical context of personalism Modern personalism has influenced the growing global support of the concept of human rights, separate from their supposed creation by state actions. The French personalist, Maritain, illustrated this point when he served a supportive role drafting the 1948 UDHR and guided its philosophical foundation. His work continued the philosophical project of the early twentieth-century personalists. These theorists were concentrated in Paris (including Maritain) which was the most prominent, yet the centers were also found in Munich (including Max Scheler [1874-1928 A.D.] and Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977 A.D.]), and Lublin (including Wojtyla) between the First and Second World War. Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950 A.D.), who created the Paris-based monthly journal, Espirit, gave published voice to this movement responding to a disintegration of economics, morality, and politics. These personalists did so by asserting the “human person as the criterion according to which a solution to the crisis was to be fashioned.”231 These influential European personalists opposed blind acceptance of liberal democracy as a safeguard for the immediate threat of totalitarianism—partly due to liberal democracy’s proclivity to incorporate impersonal individualism, a profound threat to the long-term well-being of individuals as the democratic state risks devolving into a totalitarian one under a different name (with the tyranny of the majority hostile to justice). The leading European personalists proposed an alternative with their ontological and epistemological shift to the human person as the starting point of human inquiry. This new philosophical project intended to produce a “new humanism,” with an “insistence on personal freedom and responsibility, self-determination, creativity, and subjectivity.”232 Ralph Tyler Flewelling 230

REALE, Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi. WILLIAMS, Thomas D., BENGTSSON, Jan Olof, “Personalism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, November 12, 2009, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/. 232 Ibid. 231

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(1871-1960 A.D.) described how the personalist understanding of the human person excluded her/him from being an instrument of the state with her/his individuality absorbed by society as a means to its collective goal. This anti-utilitarian approach features a stark opposition to totalitarian governments by asserting the person as “the supreme essence of democracy and hostile to totalitarianisms of every sort.”233 The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005 A.D.), mentored by Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973 A.D.), shared Mounier’s belief in the person’s duty to social and political engagement which emerges because of the communitarian principle of the person existing with a relational nature, orientating the person toward relationships with others in service of the common good which is reciprocally in service of each person.

2.4.3. Societal context of Wojtylan Personalism The most prominent Lublin personalist, Wojtyla, joined this new humanism project and soon after responded to two emerging societal trends— individualism and its opposing companion system of collectivism. He defined the one extreme of individualism in which persons prioritize their individual good above the collective community’s good and thus subordinate the common good to their own in service to it. Wojtyla notes that this system of individualism produced the economic system of capitalism in addition to the political system of liberalism into which falls Rawls. The associated counterpart is collectivism, which Wojtyla described as society subordinating the individual to its collective good and so ignoring the good of the individual as a person, thus spawning totalitarianism. Wojtyla developed his own unique system of Thomistic personalism as a synthesis of Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics of the human person and Scheler’s phenomenology. His mentor, Roman Ingarden (1893-1970 A.D.), trained Wojtyla while encouraging him to explore phenomenology following Ingarden’s own education under Edmund Husserl (1859-1938 A.D.), the founder of phenomenology. One of the main purposes of Husserl’s philosophical methodology was to counter German idealism epitomized by Kant. Husserl in response proposed a phenomenological methodology that emphasized human experience as means of access to the structures of reality. This approach seeks to bypass the weaknesses of (1) idealism’s reduction of reality into subjectivism and abstraction, in addition 233

FLEWELLING, Ralph Tyler, Personalism and the problems of philosophy: An appreciation of the work of Borden Parker Bowne (New York, NY: Methodist Book Concern, 1915).

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to (2) empiricism’s reduction of reality into the quantifiable. Wojtylan Thomistic personalism rejects the impersonal dimension of idealism incorporated in materialism’s apex which is Marxism, the system of thought which conceives of a person’s collectivity with others as her/his true essence.234 Wojtyla’s personalism also opposes the dominant twentiethcentury totalitarianism of communism which asserted impersonal determinism and dismissed the importance of the individual person as a being with inherent worth, separate from his or her role as a societal contributor. This argument also implicates a critique of more modern forms of socialism with their emphasis on collective bodies above the value of the person.

2.4.4. Overview of Wojtylan personalism Wojtylan Thomistic personalism—with its implications for bioethics and other strands of applied philosophy—emphasizes the concreteness of persons. This approach attempts to respond to the abstractness expressed by Plotinus which Wojtyla viewed as an inadequate anthropology and metaphysical account of man. He began his investigation about an adequate anthropology and metaphysical doctrine with the personalist’s central pursuit of what constitutes the personhood of a human being. This question famously appeared with a leading philosopher pioneer of Existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855 A.D.): “Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self…Man is a synthesis of the infinite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity” (Chapter 1).235 By uniting this tradition with that of phenomenology, Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics, and his contemporary 20th century psychology’s conception of persons, Wojtyla developed his system with such concepts as the incommunicable and communicable natures of man, interpersonal communion, interiority, human dignity, and the central importance of the will.

2.4.5. Methodology of Wojtyla’s system Jarosáaw Kupczak (1964-present) in Destined for liberty traces the development of Wojtyla’s system through his various philosophical influences.236 He cites Wojtyla’s former assistant, Tadeusz StyczeĔ (1931234

BENGTSSON, “Personalism.” KIERKEGAARD, Søren, Sickness unto death (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2013). 236 KUPCZAK, Jarosáaw, Destined for liberty: The human person in the philosophy 235

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2010 A.D.), who claimed that his Lublin Lectures serve as the portrait of Wojtyla’s construction of his own theory of the human person (page 41). Kupczak details how Wojtyla’s philosophical theory as part of his broader world-view rejects anthropological dualism in favor of embracing a Thomistic-Aristotelian anthropology that “describes the human person as a substantial unity of body and soul” (or animating spirit or mind); therefore, the body is an “integral part of the human person” (cf. Osaba page 242) (page 46). Though Wojtyla first introduced his methodology in his Lublin lectures and his habilitation thesis (1954), it was not until the publication of Love and Responsibility (1960) that he first robustly applied his system (page 63). Kupczak confirmed how Wojtyla’s approach incorporates elements of Thomistic metaphysics, Kantian formal ethics, twentiethcentury psychology of the will, and Scheler’s phenomenology (cf. “Personalizm tomistyczny” [“Thomistic Personalism”], pages 434-36).237 In the medical sciences, a data scientist is not professionally allowed to force the data to fit the model by starting and ending with the model one wants. A data scientist for a pharmaceutical company cannot be validly ordered to ‘prove’ a failed drug works by arguing statistically for a spurious association of the ineffective treatment and improved outcomes through manipulating the data to fit the model of the supposed association. Similarly, Wojtyla saw the liberal modern philosophers (popularly split between utilitarians and social contractarians prefiguring Rawls) trying to force the data to fit their own models by highlighting only certain human elements to justify their descriptive accounts of ethics grounded by a superficial philosophy (as they rejected substantive metaphysics) that they then argued should be normative (without first proving the logical defensibility and superiority of their system over competing systems). Wojtyla wanted to instead start with the data and then build an accurate model. So he started with attempting to discover an accurate anthropology and metaphysics of the person and then building a true normative ethics for her/him that could produce a just community of persons. Wojtyla’s first encounter with phenomenology was his habilitation thesis on Scheler which led him to conclude that phenomenology can be an effective methodology to “describe indiscriminately the whole content of

of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000). 237 WOJTYLA, Karol, Aby Chrystus siĊ nami posáugiwaá (Krakow, Poland: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1979).

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the human experience” (page 60).238 This description can include the essence of an ethical fact, “the person’s intentional experience of an ethical value” (cf. Ocena pages 7-8) (page 60). Despite his appreciation for phenomenology’s value as an investigative approach, Wojtyla adopted elements from Scheler’s insights and then parted company with him, arguing that Scheler’s phenomenological conclusions were distorted through his emotionalist anthropology and critique of Kantian formalism. This led Scheler to omit two key premises necessary for what Wojtyla believed was an adequate anthropology with a description of universally accessible human experience: (1) the normative nature of human conscience and (2) human efficient causality (page 60). .

Wojtyla noted the limitations of phenomenology, particularly its inability to articulate the essence of moral values, discriminate between morally right and wrong ethical acts, and describe how the subject of the ethical act becomes morally good or bad in relation to his acts such as described in Aristotle’s virtue ethics (page 61).239 Wojtyla further diverged from Scheler by arguing that phenomenological investigations must be grounded in a metaphysics of being which organizes the ethical values of the content of human experience with an “objective order of human goods” (page 61). Wojtyla concluded that Scheler (and Kant) who lack this foundation could not provide an adequate theory of human will for instance (cf. Wyklady pages 33-34). The recent emergence of neuroethics and AI in mainstream society further illustrates the critical need for justification of ethical actions from an analysis of human goods that is perceived by the neuroscience, AI, and greater medical community. Providing only a phenomenological account of human experience leaves unanswered a host of ethical questions particularly in the laboratory and patient exam room if the person central to these questions is not understood. Kupczak notes how Wojtyla believed the whole content of human experience could be understood only through realistic ontology. He therefore turned to Aquinas whose anthropological and metaphysical account of the human person which resembles that of modern experiential psychology (pages 62)240 because he was convinced that Scheler replaced an adequate account of action with an inadequate one of experience, deprioritizing being in the realistic sense in order to emphasize 238

KUPCZAK, Destined for liberty: The human person in the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. 239 Ibid. 240 Ibid.

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consciousness (page 39). Wojtyla rather emphasized integral human ethical experience in in the Thomistic tradition to serve as his key standard for analyzing philosophical systems as he grounded ethical values not only in the will’s phenomenological but also its ontological dimensions (page 40). He articulated the structure of these dimensions through the Thomistic (and particularly Aristotelian) theory of potency and act: “Every becoming and change consists in a being’s transition from a potency to an act—potency meaning a certain imperfection of a being which is perfected through the act” (page 79). Wojtyla could thus define the “essence of the ethical act” as the “actualization of the whole person.” This occurs through the will’s transition from potency to act in the actualization or perfection of the person through acts directed to a good as “the proper object of the will” (page 41). Thomism and personalism, mMetaphysics and ethics, objectivity and subjectivity, love (as a free act of a person willing the good of the other person) and responsibility, the ‘mind’ and the ‘heart’ were conceptually but not ontologically separate for Wojtyla—they were joined complementary aspects of the same reality of the person who is drawn not to a self-defined good but the good which determines through the free agency of the person how she/he should act to reach that good which is her/his fulfillment per the definition of the person as a rational animal.

2.4.6. Exercise of the will and interpersonal communication Kupczak details Wojtyla’s understanding of the person as possessing a dual nature of incommunicability as a unique self that still has a common human nature with others which allow such values as empathy and interpersonal communion to exist. From these two natures of the human person, Kupczak explores Wojtyla’s prioritization of the will as necessary for a truly personal act. Wojtyla discusses the will and acts in terms of love as a truly personal act that can exist only between persons, or rather as the highest and most ethical act between persons perfecting the person to the degree she/he loves the other person. Kupczak notes that Wojtyla’s description of love following Aquinas grounds itself in the person’s will and intellect (as elements of her/his interiority as a person), and so through education of a person’s love, the “essence of love consists in an affirmation of the other person as person” (page 46).241 As such, love for Wojtyla is not primarily focused on the individual’s transient values—i.e. intelligence, physical appearance, etc.—but rather is an “act of the entire integrated person and

241

Ibid.

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consists in mutual belonging and responsibility” (page 46). Kupczak discusses Wojtyla’s account of love as an act of the will and intellect in the context of an interpersonal communion, such as that found in the marriage of a man and woman. Each through their intellect comes to know the other person as a person and thus wills the good of the other with increasing intensity and perfection, thus creating a substantive and common union between each person (not simply an overlapping consensus about optimizing the utility and power of individuals to pursue one’s own selfdefined good as argued in Rawls’s social contract). Rather in Wojtyla’s account of the ‘communion’ of persons, he argues that it is a union of not simply a male and female nature but rather a union of persons for in “their sexual psycho-physical differences, one cannot find a sufficient foundation for love” (Mysli o Malzenstwie [‘Thoughts about Marriage’] page 43).242 For this interaction between persons to occur, there must be integration with the biological processes (i.e. “sexual emotions and sensual attraction”) and the metaphysical or spiritual processes (i.e. willing the good of the other person as a substantive unity of body AND soul). The realization of this integration is the product of each person’s rational capacities through a conscious act of love between persons. The experience of love between persons occurs simultaneously in the persons involved with “an experience of being [as] an efficient cause of the act of love” (page 46). Following Aristotle with his four causes including the efficient cause, and Aquinas who develops this scheme in the context of persons, Wojtyla shows how a metaphysical understanding of being for each person then flows as a causative force into the union of persons perfected ethically through subsequent love for each other that is intellectually understood and subjectively experienced. This love becomes so intense and concrete between the husband and wife for instance that their love literally can become incarnate in a new life, a new person, their child. This concrete procession of love functions not only in the family (as the fundamental unit of society) but also in society and thus the state (as the political organization of it) due to the integral unity of the state as a human family of families. Like in Aristotle’s conception of virtue being the mean dictated by the intellect to guide the appetite (namely the will) to choose the good between excess and deficiency (with the will and intellect being distinct powers of the soul governing the body), Wojtyla believed his Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysical conception of the person is the interpretative key to solving the world’s problem of war and injustice because the person IS the political 242

Ibid.

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mean between the extremes of individualism’s democratic capitalism and collectivism’s totalitarian socialism or communism. And without this philosophical anchor, modern societies would be otherwise constantly adrift between these two poles in violent and perpetual oscillation with neither extreme safeguarding the person as neither understood the persons which make up its political systems. As Aristotle understood the intellect knowing the good and directing the will to desire it, so Aquinas understood God as the Supreme Good guiding the human intellect to know the good including through natural law and thus directing the will from within (not externally imposed as in Rawls) to desire it as union with this Supreme Good by living in accordance with this good. And Wojtyla thus understood how Thomistic personalism could bring the above poles into concrete harmony in the instantiation of the person as a substantive unity of body and soul and all the ensuing complementary polarities noted above. Wojtyla thus develops the personalist implications of the concepts latent in Thomistic-Aristotelianism by accounting for the person both objectively (as a rational animal living in community constituted thus by co-dependent vulnerable members existing for the common good, which in turn exists for the individual good of each human person) and subjectively (with the above drama being experientially intelligible to the person in the universal language of human encounter). Wojtyla thus sees Socrates in the allegorical ascent from the cave both intellectually (coming to understand the objective good) and experientially (experiencing the act of one’s will freely choosing the good to which it is naturally drawn up out of the cave toward the light as love for the good which the person desires to possess and be possessed by it). Thus Wojtyla did for Thomism and personalism what Aquinas did for good and being. He showed they are interchangeable without being reducible to each other. By revising Descartes (“I think therefore I am”), Wojtyla argues that from “I AM” or God (whose essence is existence, which is a community of the three persons of the trinity as a hypostatic union of love [more on this shortly]) as the fullness of being proceeds the human person who thus can come to understand and experience her/his understanding of being as a unique subject through a still common structure of that experience (which corresponds to its object which is being). By rediscovering this ontological concrete reality that each person metaphysically belongs to each other as unique members of the common human family, this philosophical and anthropological ‘data can guide the ‘model’ of a defensible political system, pluralistic and personal, peaceful and just. As diverse languages may be heard in global crowd singing the

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same song, one can still understand the same underlying harmony (analogically of human nature as a metaphysical conception) and same meaning of the lyrics (analogically of the natural law derivative from this nature). Rather than constructed rules (made particular in the form of politically-enacted positive laws including those periodically abusive and disproportionate) serving as constraints from outside the person (as modern political liberalism with its two extremes of utilitarianism and the social contract sought to protect modern man from only to have their systems devolve into differing permutations of the same totalitarian model of the powerful versus the weak without higher metaphysical appeal), Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalist system could thus show how persons from diverse comprehensive doctrines and belief systems can live peacefully. This harmony could be achieved through their political convergence facilitated by their common philosophical understanding of their human nature that nudges them from within toward the good that is rationally knowable and communicated to each person for her/his own fulfillment, as each person is concurrently bound to work toward the common good of the community of persons. And for Wojtyla, every person not just professional philosophers can understand the above particularly the good (which metaphysically orders the conception of the person); each person naturally can objectively understand the above through her/his intellect and subjectively experience the truth of this ordering good. The natural law normatively instructing to do good and avoid evil is not just known naturally in the concrete diverse contexts of multicultural peoples from a myriad of comprehensive doctrines and belief systems—it is also experienced similarly in its structure but specific in the concrete operation of each person. Do you remember when you first knew you loved someone? You and that person are unique, and the existing love between you and that person are unique, yet you and I will describe the feeling and knowledge of that love similarly. Rawls’s system ultimately buckled under the weight of the pluralism it sought to preserve by abandoning a metaphysical or philosophical conception of the person that wrestled with such a reality; Wojtyla’s system ultimately is born and drawn upward through that pluralism which only strengthens its case by showing it as a universal moral language that can inform a just and thus peaceful body politic (by first understanding who the person is, body and soul, who constitutes the state).

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2.4.7. Incommunicability and interpersonal communication Crosby further explores Wojtyla’s personhood project particularly in the realm of selfhood in his book, The Selfhood of the Human Person. He sums up the conception of seemingly contrasting aspects of the person which Kierkegaard introduces in modern existentialism by exploring the Wojtylan personalist premise that man has a “mixed personhood, one composed of person and nature” (page 52).243 ‘Nature’ refers in this premise to the communicable properties, that is, they are generally shared with other human beings (i.e. capacity for sympathy or experiencing the world as a subject). ‘Person’ in the context of Crosby’s discussion of mixed personhood refers not to a specific human person but to what Reale describes as each human being’s individuality or concreteness. This individuality constitutes the incommunicability that is unique for each human being as a person. But is incommunicability and interpersonal communion mutually exclusive? Communion refers to how persons encounter and relate to each other as persons. This conception must be reconciled with the incommunicability of persons which the Roman jurists described: persona est sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis (Latin: ‘a person is a being which belongs to itself and which does not share its being with another’) (page 1).244 So considering incommunicability, how do two persons who each seem to be islands unto themselves share anything in common, even if they are physically and spiritually (immaterially) close to each other? Crosby defends the Wojtylan personalist premise that incommunicability and interpersonal communion are not mutually exclusive, and in fact this communion is only possible by virtue of the fact that a human being’s personhood is mixed (i.e. person and nature). Following Wojtyla, Crosby maintains, “persons not only exist as incommunicable persons but that they need, profoundly need, to be recognized as such by others” (page 57).245 Human experience vindicates this point in different historical periods and cultures. Even in primitive societies in which children were cared for communally by multiple women, there existed only one woman—the particular mother who birthed that child—who was recognized by the community as the mother. She was not interchangeable with another mother for she incommunicably existed, including her unique identity as the 243

CROSBY, The selfhood of the human person. Ibid. 245 Ibid. 244

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specific mother of that particular child. The (2) common humanity of persons also supports the intimate relation of incommunicability and interpersonal communion. The coffee house employee who spills the reader’s coffee as he brings it to the reader may exhibit embarrassment and frustration at her mistake. Upon noticing this employee’s reaction, the reader can tell the employee, “Don’t worry about it. It could have happened to anyone. Thanks for bringing the coffee.” The reader may respond with this because the reader shares a common humanity with the employee and as such, the reader shares the capacity to feel embarrassment and frustration and so seeks to reassure the employee.

2.5. Neurobiological implications for Wojtylan Thomistic personalism 2.5.1. Neurobiology and Rawls Wojtyla sought to incorporate modern psychological findings into his system to inform his conception of the human person and so produce a comprehensive translational metaphysical account (metaphysical to anthropological to medical [including psychological]) of man. True to his methodology, this section will explore the scientific field which has the one of the most significant impacts on the current scientific understanding of humans—neurobiology—and intensifies the growing need for personhood investigations (such as Wojtyla’s exploration into metaphysical conceptions of the person) to complement this emerging scientific discipline. Rawls’s political conception of justice (and the field of political philosophy) also faces increasing pressure to dialogue with this specialty and science more broadly which are exerting more influence on politics and societies as we understand more of ourselves physically because of them. Therefore, Rawls’s insistence on maintaining a purely political conception of the person (without a well-defined metaphysical basis able to converse with the physical sciences) further diminishes the relevance and utility of his system in political dialogue with the modern era unless a metaphysical modification of his system occurs (such as this current proposed revision with the Wojtylan conception of the person). We will explore if current neurobiological findings support the Wojtylan conception of the person, particularly the person possessing the capacity for free will, subjectivity, and interpersonal communion.

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2.5.2. Neurobiology and Wojtylan incommunicable self and subjectivity Francois Ansermet (1952-present) and Pierre Magistretti (1952-present) have defended a significant bridge between neuroscience and psychiatry in their book entitled, Biology of Freedom: Neural Plasticity, Experience, and the Unconscious, representative of the current state of knowledge in this field.246 Dr. Ansermet is a psychoanalyst and the head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Geneva University Hospital. Dr. Magistretti is a neurobiologist and director of the Center for Psychiatric Neurosciences at the Lausanne University Hospital. This inter-disciplinary team demonstrates how neural plasticity (the ability of the brain to alter its neural network which constitutes the brain’s structure) serves a foundational role in memory and learning mechanisms (page xiv). This work shows how plasticity actually serves to inscribe experience into the brain and influence future actions. The synapses (junctions between neurons) can undergo change as they connect neurons with each other and inscribe a trace for a person’s lived experience. This evokes the psychoanalyst hypothesis of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939 A.D.) that experience is transcribed in different systems that eventually produce an unconscious mental life (page xiv). Ansermet and Magistretti describe the potential of neural plasticity to occur through a varying quantity of neurotransmitters released at the synaptic level. Such neurotransmitters can modify the “intensity of the transfer of information between neurons,” thus producing a trace of a memory through mental representation of a perceived event or stimulus (page 23).247 Calcium concentration and ionotropic postsynaptic receptors can serve as regulatory mechanisms for the traces by altering the neurotransmitter concentration.248 The major contribution that the above and similar teams provide for personhood concepts in the neurobiological and AI era—and by extension, for the Wojtylan conception as it modifies Rawls’s theory of justice in this work—is providing a neurobiological evidence for a person’s individuality and subjectivity. Our brains encode experiences as memories unique to us which in turn uniquely impact our future decisions, a process that we as

246

ANSERMET, François, MAGISTRETTI, Pierre, Biology of freedom: Neural plasticity, experience, and the unconscious (London, UK: Karnac Books, 2007). 247 Ibid. 248 BLISS, Tim V.P., GRAHAM, L., MORRIS, Richard G.M., “Long-term potentiation and structure of the issue,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 358, no. 1432 (2003): 607–11.

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subjects of these processes are aware of occurring and accordingly direct. Magistretti and Ansermet summarize their argument that neurobiological findings, affirmed by psychoanalytic experience, indicates that a person seems “genetically determined not to be genetically determined” (page 8).249 Rather than the classic arguments from the 20th century that individuals are determined by their genetic makeup or their environment, this neuroscientist and psychoanalyst team offers significant evidence that neural plasticity “implies diversity and singularity” by pointing to each individual’s unique way of experiencing the world through her/his subjectivity which can be objectively observed through the traces of the experiences transcribed in the person’s neural network (page 7). Thus, human beings’ genetic make-up (particularly the neural structure of the brain) allows human beings to be individuals. This dynamic individualspecific process of neural networks is consistent with Wojtyla’s conception as each person is an indeterminate and free self who make choices through her/his subjectivity as a person rather than being solely determined like a chimpanzee for instance by its genetics or environment. Wojtyla’s discussion of sexual intercourse among spouses is also consistent with these neurobiological insights regarding human beings’ mode of experiencing the world. Crosby in Personalist Papers examines Wojtyla’s cosmological account of the purpose of intercourse being procreation to further the human species which parallels non-rational animal sexual reproduction (page 245).250 Wojtyla distinguished this by the “personalist fact” through analysis of a person’s subjectivity in which intercourse between a husband and wife generates the “self-experience of spouses in the spousal subjectivity” (page 245) and highlights its dual personalist purpose as an ethical act of love affirming and willing the good of the other in the physical and spiritual union. This experience of intimacy with the self of one spouse, experiencing subjectively the self of the other person as a person, demonstrates the individual nature of the experience of each other as a unique individual. The trace of their intimate experiences can influence their future free decisions to remain committed to each other specifically in an interpersonal communion, separate from simply seeking to obey genetic or environmental dictates to reproduce with any biologically appropriate human available at a certain time or place.

249

ANSERMET, François, MAGISTRETTI, Pierre, Biology of freedom: Neural plasticity, experience, and the unconscious (London, UK: Karnac Books, 2007). 250 Ibid.

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2.5.3. Neurochemistry and Wojtylan interpersonal communion The Wojtylan conception articulates philosophically what an increasing body of neurobiological research into the interactions among humans is revealing scientifically. Neuroscientist Larry Young of the Emory University School of Medicine discusses (emblematically of this field) the importance of the neuropeptide oxytocin (particularly in female specimens) and vasopressin (particularly in male specimens) in his Biopsychology Colloquium.251 Two relevant points are: (1) variations in the capacity to form adult social bonds can be affected by oxytocin and vasopressin receptors’ distributional variances in the brain’s reward centers among monogamous and non-monogamous species. Also, (2) research findings in humans indicate that altruistic behavior and pair bonding behavior as in the case of mates are linked to polymorphisms in the human vasopressin receptor promoter. Further, studies have demonstrated oxytocin can increase eye-gaze, promote the capacity to empathize with others, and deepen trust among humans. These findings correspond to Wojtyla’s metaphysical account that persons are drawn to deep interpersonal communion in longitudinal monogamous relationships in a way that promotes affirmation of the person rather than occasional temporary interactions among individuals. Such interactions can include relationships in which one or both persons disregard their capacities to experience and honor the subjectivity of the other through empathizing with the other as a subject of human experiences (and subsequently can inflict harm by using the person solely as an object and means to the other’s end rather than loving her/him as a subject and an end).

2.6. Synthesis of Wojtylan Thomistic personalism and Rawlsian justice 2.6.1. Initial assessment: irreconcilable system The preceding text sought to outline the basic ideas of Rawls’s theory of justice and political liberalism, and Wojtyla’s conception of the human person. The possibility of synthesis for the two systems initially appears questionable if it can actually be achieved because of the radical and fundamental differences between their two systems. Rawls in his reasonable 251

BARRET, Catherine E., YOUNG, Larry J., “Molecular neurobiology of social bonding,” in The Oxford Handbook of Molecular Psychology, ed. Turhan Canli (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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pluralism allows for multiple conceptions of the good which reasonable and rational citizens can recognize. Wojtyla differs by adopting Thomistic metaphysics in the Aristotelian tradition which argues that reasonable and rational persons will recognize one conception of the good (but it can be gradually knowable in varying degrees from within the belief system of each person). Thus the resulting methodologies and conclusions for each of these philosophers have fundamentally opposing foundations which makes both systems in their current form appear initially incommensurable. Yet if we wish to preserve as much of Rawls’s social contract theory as philosophically defensible given its attractive strengths noted above we need to metaphysically refine his system. Can Wojtyla’s system refine his while preserving as many of the key elements as philosophically defensible? We will later take up the question of starting with Wojtyla’s system of Thomistic personalism and determine if we can import as much of the compatible elements of the Rawlsian social contract as in the UDHR/UDBHR (to refine and ground such a framework in the larger Wojtylan system and so create a potential bridge to Rawlsians). In other words, we will investigate later if Wojtyla can complete what the Rawlsian social contract began by re-anchoring this modern philosophy in the premodern Aristotle via Thomistic teleological metaphysics to complete the Rawlsian transition defensibly from constitutional to overlapping consensus (via the politically focused thought experiments of a social construct as a contract rules-based framework) to converging (via Wojtyla’s philosophically focused metaphysical and phenomenological accounts of the human person uniting diverse belief systems). But first, we will attempt to import as much as Wojtylan as possible into Rawls (needed to make it defensible) to determine if it can produce Rawlsian conclusions about justice that is fair but not reducible to fairness alone and a political conception of the person who is not simply political but also personally and philosophically understood to thus import defensibility into Rawls. So if we cannot be Rawlsian and justify our system, must we be Wojtylan? Or can we be something in between like a Rawlsian-Wojtylan? (the latter proposition will be tested now).

2.6.2. Consistency of Wojtylan personalism in Rawlsian justice Through adopting the Wojtylan conception of the person in place of Rawls’s own metaphysical doctrine in the political conception of the person, Rawls could preserve his political conception of justice with a metaphysical doctrine with three key features. His political conception of the person (which forms one of his foundational ideas necessary for his political

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conception of justice) already possesses a metaphysical doctrine of the nature of the human person—specifically, there is no relevant doctrine or potential for any comprehensive doctrine that includes one (i.e. any nonsecular liberal system). Thus by replacing Rawls’s restrictive doctrine with the Wojtylan metaphysical conception of the human person, certain significant implications are created: (1) The integrity of his political conception of justice system as independent of any comprehensive doctrine is preserved for reasons discussed in (3). (2) The definition of reasonable comprehensive doctrines expands to any doctrine that not only would affirm fair terms of social cooperation in a political conception of justice but also would not oppose basic facts widely believed consistent with persons existing as persons. (3) The new political conception of the person in Rawls’s system, informed now with the Wojtylan metaphysics doctrine of the nature of the human person, allows this account to be widely accessible to citizens of different comprehensive doctrines as principles of practical reason. This doctrine’s phenomenological account cuts across all comprehensive doctrines, opening its metaphysical insights for persons to digest into their own systems. This feature of broad access is due to the Wojtylan conception that can be viewed as independent of any comprehensive doctrine by analyzing it strictly in terms of its functional ability to fit harmoniously as a module into any citizen’s comprehensive doctrine. Before a person is a Buddhist or a devout Evangelical, he or she is first a person. Thus, personhood serves as the common denominator of all citizens in a democratic state (and all communities of humans, political or other). (4) This replacement can prevent a state’s overlapping consensus from reverting back to a modus vivendi. This is accomplished by correcting Rawls’s inconsistency in his distinction between modus vivendi and overlapping consensus in that the consensus is achieved by citizens beginning with their comprehensive doctrines (which can be philosophical, religious, or moral) to adopt the political conception of justice (which he asserts has philosophical principles inherent in it). Adopting rather the Wojtylan metaphysical conception provides the political conception of justice the widely accessible philosophical link to citizens’ comprehensive doctrines; it would thus be consistent for them to reference their doctrines in order to form an overlapping consensus, while the phenomenological

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aspect of this metaphysical conception also allows it to function as a political instrument to construct a political conception of justice independent of any comprehensive doctrine. (5) The replacement clarifies and provides justification for Rawls’s political conception of the person as a free and equal citizen in the political sense but also as a unique subject of her/his own actions informed by reason. The Wojtyla metaphysical conception of the person can inform Rawls’s political conception of the person and thus the political conception of justice (created through a fair procedure among free and equal citizens) while remaining consistent with Rawls’s definition of the conception of justice being political. He defines ‘political’ as having three requirements that the conception of justice would (a) apply strictly to the fundamental structure of a state, (b) be proposed separate from any comprehensive doctrine, and (c) be articulated in the context of basic political principles that are latent in a democratic state’s public political culture (page 223).252 This modification leaves intact Rawls’s premise that the political conception of justice is independent of any comprehensive doctrine and so can gain overlapping consensus. Rawls’s criterion for a political conception of justice to be freestanding also is preserved by the Wojtylan modification because the criterion exempts experiential and metaphysical data associated with persons (i.e. Wojtyla’s conception of the human person). His criterion asserts that a political conception is freestanding if it: (a) is not a component of any comprehensive doctrine, (b) is not a derivative of any comprehensive doctrine, and (c) possesses a moral and normative ideal that is inherent in the conception (page xliii).253 Though Wojtyla fundamentally links the ThomisticAristotelian metaphysics of being to his phenomenology, this Wojtylan modification allows a robust account of moral intuitions as basic capacities of persons independent of the comprehensive doctrines with which they identify. The clarification of the expanded definition of reasonable doctrines—see (2) above—underscores the flexibility of the Wojtylan conception to fit into any reasonable comprehensive doctrine.

252 253

RAWLS, Political Liberalism. Ibid.

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2.6.3. Further harmonious elements: Rawlsian-Wojtylan synthesis Certain distinctive traits of Rawls’s two principles parallel Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism. One such Rawlsian feature derives from the first principle of justice: a citizen’s fundamental liberties and rights must not be exchanged for social goods (i.e. depriving a citizen of fair living wages in order to increase economic gains of a corporation). This is strongly echoed by Wojtyla’s Personalist Norm that adopts Kant’s categorical imperative to never use someone merely as a means but always as an end. Another derivative aspect of Rawls’s second principle compatible with Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism is found in Rawls’s difference principle: the total product produced by inequalities must benefit everyone especially the least advantaged in the state. Wojtyla’s emphasis on the dignity of every person as a person deserving of equal consideration parallels Rawls’s rejecting a political or economic system that uses certain (less advantaged) citizens in order to benefit other (more advantaged) citizens such as utilitarianism could justify. Where Wojtyla provides the justification for condemning this inequality, Rawls provides the mechanism to reduce its likelihood. This Rawlsian mechanism is clarified and strengthened through the supreme value recognized for each person through Wojtylan Thomistic personalism, which can in turn define and enhance protections for citizens as human persons born in the nation to which citizenry is claimed.

2.6.4. Equating ‘citizen’ with ‘person’ in the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system Up to this point, the newly proposed Rawlsian-Wojtylan system equates person with citizen whose existence begins at fertilization given Wojtyla’s metaphysics informed by modern biology (as Aristotle and Aquinas were informed by a less precise pre-modern biology [which was unclear about the emergence of the genetically and biologically unique individual at fertilization and so believed ensoulment and thus the person as composite body and soul emerged after fertilization]). Modern genetic and imaging techniques demonstrate that the person’s own unique material substance begins as the product of the human male sperm fertilizing the human female egg. Because of the integral unity of body and soul (or animating principle) according to Wojtyla’s conception, the creation of the person’s substance marks the beginning of the person as a person, even while such a being in her/his embryonic level of development possesses the not-yet-actualized capacities for consciousness and rational agency for instance. From the

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perspective of the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system, citizens are first recognized at the creation of the new person at the scientifically observable point of fertilization. The Rawlsian principles of justice (i.e. equal rights and equal opportunity) are therefore applied to persons beginning with their earliest developmental stages in this modified system.

2.6.5. Global application of the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system Criticism can be made against this Wojtylan modification of the Rawlsian system in the case of certain persons who are persons in the Wojtylan conception, such as illegal immigrants, who may not be recognized by certain modern democratic states as citizens of those states where they reside. So how can the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system respond to this apparent severing of a human being’s co-identities of person and citizen? The Rawlsian system modified by Wojtyla could potentially respond that this severing by asserting persons are solely citizens deserving of legal protection (i.e. illegal aliens)—and thus a state is not bound to care for such citizens appropriately even when their home state cannot do so—endangers the overlapping consensus on which global stability rests. The alternative is to recognize the globalization phenomenon in which technological, political, cultural, and economic forces increasingly are uniting states into a global community. Therefore all persons are citizens of this global human community that exists as a type of international state (with increasing duties placed on states for persons possessing legal citizenship for those respective states from which they live in addition to their global citizenship). The global state is governed by the community of individual state governments which have common interests (i.e. the prosperity of their citizens, their national security, the continuation of their states, etc.). No universally recognized centralized government (with the same degree of autonomy and control as a local state government such as India, China, etc.) must exist for this global state to flourish. Rather, states globally can form overlapping consensus on a political conception of justice from the Rawlsian perspective, modified by the Wojtylan conception of the human person. This allows greater stability than a mere modus vivendi for the global community of states to pursue their own interests while temporarily balancing their interests with others states for as long as it is also to their advantage (i.e. the temporary treaties among former warring states between WWI and WWII). The alternative arrangement of overlapping consensus is increasingly embodied by the principles of the UN which today champions the Rawlsian framework. However the Rawlsian-

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Wojtylan philosophical modification indicate certain political changes are required for certain UN projects (i.e. population control through selective termination of pregnancies) in order to recognize each global citizen as a person (with the rights and opportunities which subsequently follow from this recognition).

2.6.6. Admitting certain comprehensive doctrines as reasonable Which doctrines are reasonable in a Rawlsian system modified by Wojtyla is particularly difficult to define given the ambiguity of which system predominates in the revised definition of reasonableness; nonetheless, for the sake of adequately investigating the above thesis if Rawls’s can import Wojtyla’s system, we will attempt this definition with proper attribution or at least derivation of the predominant system in a given instance. Certain comprehensive doctrines can be judged as unreasonable in the traditional Rawlsian system, as in the case of a cult adhering to a comprehensive doctrine justifying serial killing. This doctrine does not recognize certain political principles of justice that the rest of the state converges together on within an overlapping consensus (i.e. that agrees citizens should not be unjustly deprived of life through being serial killed). Therefore, this cult would not be judged to have a reasonable comprehensive doctrine. Persons adhering to other such unreasonable doctrines could not enter into the overlapping consensus in Rawls’s conception and thus enjoy the state’s protection of their equal liberties and equal opportunities (i.e. those guaranteed by his two principles of justice). In the new Rawlsian-Wojtyla system, a comprehensive doctrine could be considered unreasonable if it does not recognize the political conception of justice, informed by Wojtyla’s conception of the human person. An example could be a doctrine which advocates the pregnancy termination of a child at the fetal stage of development if it is a girl or has Down syndrome (i.e. on the traditional utilitarian grounds respectively that some cultures prioritize male children or that the costs of special care for the child with Downs would be excessively high for the state to assume). Such a doctrine within this system could be considered to be an unreasonable comprehensive doctrine (through particular Wojtylan predominance here). The justification for this judgment is that unreasonable doctrines undermine the stability of the overlapping consensus by threatening to reduce it to a mere constitutional consensus, which can then lead to its deterioration due to a lack of substantive and lasting state-wide consensus. The doctrines that do not recognize certain persons as persons (i.e. advocates of euthanizing elderly patients on the traditional utilitarian grounds that they are

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unwarranted burdens on government health funds) would be excluded from overlapping consensus. However, these doctrines could be modified to recognize the political conception of justice (informed by the Wojtylan conception of the person within Rawls’s political conception of the person) often without significant modification to their doctrines because the Wojtylan conception is phenomenologically accessible to persons across doctrinal boundaries who share a common existence as persons while also being philosophically intelligible to them (by appealing to human nature and the natural law governing all peoples regardless of their doctrines). A person can only hold a comprehensive doctrine once she/he already exists as a person with the above referenced human nature and bound by natural law that proceeds from this nature. So though Rawls produced an influential and complex though philosophically and experientially superficial account of the person, Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism may strengthen it for those insistent on at least for the time being remaining committed to Rawls’s system (while leaving open the bridge to Wojtyla’s more robust personalism which the remainder of this book will analyze particularly with application for the UN and AI-GNR).

2.7. Perinatal hospice in the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system 2.7.1. Introduction of the ethical issue The Republic’s proposition about eliminating newborns with special needs in the context of the neurobiological era’s medicine-as-customization model can now be addressed through the lens of a Rawlsian theory of justice, modified by Wojtylan Thomistic personalism. The ancient philosophical question of destroying newborn infants viewed as defective finds its modern counterpart in the case of a child at the fetal stage of development prenatally diagnosed with a sickness viewed as incompatible with life after for instance AI-GNR failed to correct the sickness. In this neurobiological and AI era, not only is prenatal genetic testing becoming increasingly prevalent but also the general trend in medicine that Rose noted as moving from healing to customization. As technical mastery over human life at its earliest stages in utero develops so also does the public demand for healthier babies who no longer carry the same genetic conditions former generations have (along with ‘designer’ babies not just with specific health traits but also those not directly related to survival including intelligence, facial features, eye and hair color, sex, etc.). Therefore, prenatal testing raises the question about selective termination of the child at the fetal stage of development in the case of positive test results for the various screened conditions. (Of note,

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this topic is related though more common than pre-implantation diagnosis with similar ethical implications; there are a limited number of less ethically problematic cases in which both of the above can be used to guide therapeutic options to help treat the child in utero but these limited cases are by far the minority as initial and current medical practice uses the above for selective termination considerations). Christian Munthe (1962-present) provides a historical analysis of the onset of this current bioethical issue in his article, “The moral roots of prenatal diagnosis: Ethical aspects of the early introduction and presentation of prenatal diagnosis in Sweden.”254 Munthe surveyed sixty-four articles mentioning “prenatal diagnosis” in Sweden between 1969-1977 which was the beginning of prenatal diagnosis in Sweden (and preceded the contemporary international debate surrounding this issue). Primary research materials include printed publications accompanied by the secondary sources of interviews with four leading prenatal diagnosis medical specialists from this time period, in addition to four critics of the prenatal diagnosis debate after 1977. Munthe’s research indicates that prenatal diagnosis and its clinical and policy implementation was not produced or guided by deliberate research but rather was an effect of research that became clinical practice as various practitioners and companies operationalized it for their purposes. The three dominant perspectives on this issue include (1) the official view, (2) the preventive aim, and (3) the economic motive. The (1) official view was that prenatal diagnosis was a genetic counseling tool in which: (a) medical professionals determined the likelihood that the child of prospective parents would have a child with a certain medical condition and (b) these professionals then notified them of the results and possible actions notably termination “on the basis of this result.” Swedish professionals largely accepted this official view which was justified by strengthening patient autonomy. This perspective omitted coercion and exploitation of the prospective parents and the child(ren) based on the results of the prenatal diagnosis testing. The second perspective was (2) the preventive aim that sought to prevent children diagnosed with certain medical conditions from being born. As such, it conflicted with the (1) official view by advocating and offering selective abortion as the only proper and available action on the basis of the testing result, thus 254

MUNTHE, Christian, The moral roots of prenatal diagnosis: Ethical aspects of the early introduction and presentation of prenatal diagnosis in Sweden (Gothenburg, Sweden: Swedish Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, 1996).

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undermining the official view’s emphasis of the patient(s) as autonomous. The final perspective was (3) the economic motive which was similar to the (2) preventative aim but relied on financial justification. Medical professionals cited such reasons to advocate selective abortion of the child (with a suspected prenatal diagnosis that would require higher levels of care) to reduce state costs. The (3) economic motive differs from the (2) preventive aim because it did not entail measures taken to restrict patient’s autonomy. In the early development of prenatal diagnosis, Munthe reports that there was a widespread lack of philosophical scholarship on this issue, noting ethical concerns were infrequently discussed in the medical specialists’ presentations on the topic. They discussed new prenatal diagnosis techniques and their associated economic or technical dimensions. Yet the majority of professionals involved in this testing method remained silent on the ethical discussions concerning the diagnosis implications; once such discussions began, prenatal diagnosis had already become standard clinical practice that operated without influence of ethical considerations. Philosophy moved too slowly to influence the politics of medical practice.

2.7.2. Analysis with the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system Wojtyla’s approach can provide significant modification to strengthen the Rawlsian conception of justice pertaining to this bioethical issue by applying a widely accepted political conception of justice that has at its core, the Wojtylan conception of the human person. This refined system accounts for the mother, father, and child at the fetal stage of development as persons who are incommunicable according to Wojtylan Thomistic personalism, and as such, are drawn into interpersonal communion with each other through their shared human nature. One might object that the child at the embryonic or fetal stage of development is not an incommunicable person because of her/his lack of cognitive function to relate to other persons in a conscious recognition of the incommunicability of her/his mother for instance. However, Wojtylan Thomistic personalism in a Rawlsian system can generate four major responses—R1, R2, R3, & R4. (R1) The person is an integral unity of body and soul (or self-expressed in terms of the mind or animating principle) so the person’s unique substance (and thus the person) begins at fertilization of the female egg with the male sperm from the mother and father at the beginning of the embryonic development stage. This conception of the person revises Rawls’s political conception of the person by understanding each citizen from her/his earliest

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developmental stages in utero to possess the capacity to make claims to state institutions (without arbitrary or artificial markers assigned to a person’s natural continuous development or life from fertilization to death [or list of capacities or powers such as cognitive function] that can justify ethically assigning lower value of the person as a person before or after that point such as birth or self-awareness). Personhood and thus recognition of the dignity and infinite value of the person resides in her/his existence that is physically confirmed (i.e. by seeing, touching, and hearing the person in front of you) and manifested (i.e. the person existing and eventually after adequate time from birth for most people being able to be aware of her/his own existence through the powers of their soul including the intellect). Development stages and capacities do not add or subtract from their personhood and thus neither their value (Nietzsche would say otherwise, but not Wojtyla). These development, cognitive, and self-awareness capacities remain in the person whether or not they are realized. Further, persons in utero could be considered in the Rawlsian category of the least well off in the state because of their not-yet-actualized potency for communication of their claims to institutions for their basic liberties to be protected through the first two principles of justice. (R2) Rawls’s first and second principles of justice in this modified Rawlsian-Wojtylan system provide insight into articulating fair terms of social cooperation among citizens, beginning from their earliest development stages. The first principle recognizes basic liberties and rights for the child at the fetal stage of development, including the right not to be unjustly deprived of life. This principle can also be seen in the case of mentally or developmentally handicapped adolescents who are protected under American law and common moral intuition from being terminated through lethal injection by their parents on the grounds that they possess these conditions. We have special autistic classes (not Nazi gas chambers) in public schools across America for instance for these children. The common denominator between these persons at their adolescent level of development and their embryonic level of development is their identity as persons with a substance beginning from fertilization. Rawls’s second principle modified with Wojtyla indicates that the inequality of allowing children at the fetal stage of development to be terminated cannot be justified because it does not benefit the least well off in the state (namely, the child who receives no benefit from being terminated [of note, Wojtyla spoke on terminations of pregnancy as abortion, but in keeping with the Rawlsian-centric system currently in a pluralistic state which has different terminology with this topic, we will use here ‘terminations of pregnancy’ as it is the term accepted by the medical community, public debate, and

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legislation at the center of this debate]). The resultant ethics imported into a Rawlsian political system from Wojtylan metaphysics would prohibit termination on any grounds even if there could be construed societal benefit or politically popular arbitrary limitation on a person’s equal moral status. The Rawlsian-Wojtylan system would thus argue that you cannot get rid of a disease by getting rid of the patient. (R3) A neurobiologically-informed Wojtylan conception of the person does not set arbitrary conditions for personhood (only metaphysical i.e. coming into existence as a biological human) nor accompanying protections for the sick child at the fetal development stage (i.e. being in a healthy state for all 9 months of pregnancy in order to be carried to term). Genetic testing for neurological pathologies and other conditions can still occur for instance while the child is still a 4-cell zygote with the goal of providing early interventions to ease the disease burden for the her/him (i.e. correcting a protein imbalance in the case of fetuses with Down syndrome) to help improve the chance of survival and as healthy a life as possible. Overlapping consensus on the political conception of justice is threatened by a lack of consensus on when the principle of justice applies to citizens. The scientific insight that a new unique human life begins development at fertilization can be translated into the political context as a scientific idea independent of any comprehensive doctrine and latent in the public culture. As such, citizens from different comprehensive doctrines can approach it and accept it for reasons inherent in their own doctrines and subsequently affirm it as part of a political conception of justice as fairness. In the Rawlsian system, even prior to its Wojtylan modification, it remains questionable if justification is possible to produce an arbitrary (politically defined) line during a person’s development (once she/he has begun) to indicate that before this line, the person is not a person for which the principle of justice applies. This attempt could not draw on science (which clearly indicates that a person’s life begins its developmental process at fertilization) but only from a comprehensive philosophical or religious doctrine in order to produce some type of account why personhood should be attributed to a child at the fetal stage in its 13th week gestational age or its 28th week. This case is similar to the issue of selective termination of pregnancy which Rawls refers to as abortion and may simply lead to a “stand-off between different political conceptions” that demands a vote (page liii). Yet for Rawls to remain consistent with his account of the political conception of justice as fairness, his system could not justify a vote to support such selective terminations because they would oppose his two principles of justice that serve as the regulatory organizational principle for the state.

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(R4) This system argues the parents and child at the fetal stage exist as incommunicable persons with a relational nature orienting them toward experiencing their roles as mother and father in relation to their child as their child. Their interdependence exists because they are persons and as such it cannot be translated into justification that the mother or father can become or be made instruments of the state which can in turn advocate the family terminate its prenatally diagnosed child on the grounds of saving limited resources for the state instead of spending it in care for the child. Further, the child’s personhood opposes her/his termination and justifies her/his infinite value that is not undermined by her/his initial lack of interiority (as her/his early stage of cognitive development is by nature a continuous progression that will eventually actualize the potency/capacity). Wojtyla’s approach has broader implications that complicate the attempt of critics simply dismissing its associated conclusions about the personhood of the mother, father, and child on the grounds that it can only be applicable for citizens in a pluralistic state who adhere to a doctrine or ethical system sympathetic to his personalism. Citizens from different doctrines or ethical systems can come together to affirm Wojtyla personalist conclusions about a mother, father, and child’s personhood in the context of prenatal diagnosis through a phenomenological understanding of the person (which is not a superfluous but necessary logical derivative of his metaphysics of the person). Citizens of reasonable doctrines, in Rawlsian terms, could affirm this understanding (i.e. person’s relational nature, supreme value, etc.) in overlapping consensus as essential for their regime’s conception of justice and the stability of the regime and thus their ability to conceive of a good life and pursue such life according to their plural reasonable doctrines. As such, this Rawlsian framework—modified through Wojtylan Thomistic personalism—would oppose prenatal termination of a mother and father’s child at the embryonic level of development in light of an adverse diagnosis unsuccessfully corrected by AI-GNR. Further, the modified Rawlsian framework opposes such termination under its procedural conception of justice. The child conceived in a regime is a citizen of the state, and as such, is protected by Rawls’s First and Second Principle (as the citizen is understood first as a person metaphysically per the above Wojtylan modification). The First Principle reiterates the equal rights granted to all citizens. The difference principle within the Second Principle also rejects selective termination of the child in utero on the grounds that doing so worsens the social and economic inequalities of the child (who is the least advantaged citizen because of her/his inability: (a) to defend herself/himself and (b) be visibly seen as a person with physical

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traits consistent with those of persons in general [barring instances of in utero imaging techniques commonly done in routine medical practice which otherwise make them visible]). The social inequality, embodied as social stigma, is increasingly attached to children with disabilities as selective termination of children prenatally diagnosed with medical conditions becomes more prevalent. As this stigma increases, economic inequalities become more exaggerated as the less economically advantaged families experience greater pressure to terminate their prenatally diagnosed children under the coercive force of economic considerations. Thus, termination of such children violates the Rawlsian principles of justice by (1) denying the person at the embryonic and fetal stages of equal rights and (2) failing to address social and economic inequalities which do not work to the advantage of all, particularly the less-advantaged, i.e. persons at these earlier development stages. A further implication of the Rawlsian-Wojtylan system is that the mother and father experience damage to their conception of themselves as persons when they do not recognize their child including at the embryonic or fetal stages as a person with incommunicability and a common humanity as proper also to them as persons. This can occur in the case of selective termination of their child after an adverse prenatal diagnosis. Attempts to justify this termination negate the child as an incommunicable person sharing a common humanity with the parents and medical team responsible for the termination. The parents’ negation of the child as a person, and by extension the medical team and state where this is legally permits, severs the interpersonal communion of the parents (and medical team and state) with the child and all of these parties with each other by defaulting to the fallacy which Reale attributes to Plotinus (and Crosby recognizes as a common strand amid the classical Greek philosophers), namely referring to the “interiority of man only in the abstract, or rather in general” or not at all. This fallacy fails to recognize the incommunicability of the child (even when her/his capacity for interiority has not yet been actualized) and in turn the incommunicability of each other. It perceives a drastically weaker form of individuality and value of the child recognized by the parents, medical team, and the state who qualify their own individuality with contingencies (i.e. including their capacity to assert their individuality which the child at the early development stages cannot due because of her/his transient position in the biological and cognitive development that is the life of every human person). The Platonically termed ‘defective child’ thus is understood by the parents, medical team, and the state as someone (or something) other than a person

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and so can be manipulated or even disposed of as a replaceable, communicable entity. The Wojtylan conception in a Rawlsian framework rather perceives a person (as a substantive unity of unique body and soul) who begins when the substance begins at fertilization. Wojtylan Thomistic personalism refining and animating a Rawlsian framework thus argues that human beings exist as human persons (precisely because they exist as human beings) regardless of contingencies of the existence or non-existence of development stage or capacities (i.e. consciousness or degree of dependence on others for survival); by virtue of these entities existing as persons, interpersonal communion with others in relation to these human beings is proper as a form of meaningful recognition of the common humanity and incommunicability of these persons.

2.7.3. Perinatal hospice: ethical conclusions A medically and ethically competitive alternative to selective termination within the Rawlsian-Wojtylan framework is perinatal hospice. This multidisciplinary approach, pioneered by an obstetrician-gynecologist team describe this approach in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecologists as the integration of accurate prenatal diagnosis, perinatal grief management, and hospice care for the family and the child with an adverse prenatal diagnosis.255 A comprehensive team of physicians, nurses, and social workers implement this model of care by adapting the hospice model to manage family grief surrounding the adverse prenatal diagnosis and accompany the family through antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum care. Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism affirms this model’s recognition of the child as a person within the Rawlsian conception of justice which supports the perinatal hospice team’s attempt to better the least-advantaged (i.e. the child) amid social and economic inequalities by encouraging and enabling parents to parent their child for as long as her/his medical condition allows. Thus, a Rawlsian-Wojtylan framework provides a substantive account of the ethical strength of this approach as a competitive model of care for these families that is politically appealing (given its Rawlsian framework intelligible to pluralistic states) and philosophically sound (given its Thomistic metaphysical grounding and resultant personalist account of the person).

255

HOELDTKE, N.J., CALHOUN, B.C., “Perinatal hospice,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 185, no. 3 (2011): 525–29.

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It should be clear by now however that an attempted synthesis with Rawls of Wojtyla’s Thomism is suspect at best. This Thomistic metaphysics may make a Rawlsian social contract more defensible (by allowing an objective justification of justice that is [among other things] fair and does not devolve into incommensurability inadequately resolved by ultimately ineffective Rawlsian thought experiments or excessive appeal to socio-cultural values held in largely Western liberal democratic capitalist states). But its conclusions are highly divergent from classical Rawls to the point they may be unrecognizable to Rawlsians. The vast majority of the above states have nothing currently in their concrete social contracts (i.e. constitutions) for protections of every person from fertilization (and those that do are largely in state-wide debates and controversies to reverse those terms). Further, it is unconvincing to most current Rawlsians why a metaphysical revision such as by Wojtyla is needed in the first place because their prohibition against objective conceptions of the good largely produces the secular state they desire philosophically and culturally. Finally if Rawlsians wish to have more of Wojtyla’s system, why should they not just join his camp while still being able to use Rawlsian compatible concepts? (as Rawls’s system can be used by Wojtyla’s system but not the other way around). Thus we turn our attention now to investigating is there adequate anthropological and philosophical evidence to justify beginning with a Wojtylan Thomistic personalism that can incorporate key Rawlsian social contract concepts and make them intelligible to Rawlsians among others. At worst we may in doing so facilitate productive pluralistic dialogue in the particular case of AI-GNR and at best we may complete the primary objective of what such a social contract sought to do but is unable (i.e. facilitate pluralistic moral convergence) without a metaphysical foundation that is universally intelligible to diverse belief systems.

CHAPTER 3 ANTHROPOLOGICAL, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGICAL, AND POLITICAL ECONOMIC CHALLENGES TO HUMAN RIGHTS

3.1. Background The previous chapter explored political liberalism, particularly that formulated by John Rawls (including a possible theoretical revision with Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism to strengthen it), as a promising and popular theoretical framework to explore the practical questions surrounding AI-GNR. This chapter will have three steps. It will first outline this framework’s limitations (as an adequately robust and satisfactory system) both anthropologically (via global demographics, evolutionary biology, and political economy) and philosophically (via logic and metaphysics) to investigate the thesis that if we cannot remain Rawlsian and have a defensible system, and we cannot be a Rawlsian-Wojtylan (if the distinctive Rawlsian feature is a complete rejection of a teleological metaphysical conception of the objective good [that otherwise could make it defensible], and a distinctive Wojtylan feature is an acceptance of such a Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics), can we thus be Wojtylan but articulate and account for much of the Rawlsian framework in such a way that preserves key insights from Rawls and offers a bridge to staunch social contractarians and like-minded political liberalism supporters? This chapter will thus detail the competitor to a global bioethics framework, the UN rights-duty approach, including the application of the preceding anthropological and philosophical perspectives with implications for strengthening this framework through the largely unexplored Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law foundation of the UN’s foundational documents in the UDHR and its Charter (to be fully articulated by Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism). Global bioethics, and ethics in general, does not occur in a vacuum. It is not cold, sterile, nor independent of the agents who conduct inquiries into these disciplines and affected by its rapidly evolving advances and practices. As such, the societal context that influences global bioethics is a necessary

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consideration to understand how the ethical frameworks developed by philosophers are influenced by their cultures, places, and eras (and how these factors may require modifications of those frameworks to be more anthropologically and philosophically compatible). Giving the continual bio-scientific and technological progress of modernity in a globalized world, healthcare with related bioethical considerations has global consequences for economics, security, resource shortages, and thus world peace. These consequences are only amplified by its significant share of the global economy with healthcare spending by 2020 being expected to total $8.7 trillion, or 10.5% of nations’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP).256 As we dive into this interdisciplinary analysis, please note that the empirical points made in this chapter are current as of 2017 unless specified otherwise.

3.1.1. Population growth and belief systems The non-partisan research center, the Washington D.C.-based Pew Center, published in 2015 the first known world-wide study on global projections for religious population trends using 6-years of data from 234 nations.257 By 2050 and 2 billion additional people on top of the current 7 billion human residents of Earth, Christianity is projected to remain the largest religion (31.4% or 2.92 billion), followed by Islam (29.7% or 2.76 billion) fueled by Muslims’ explosive growth rate of 73% compared to the 35% average overall global population growth.258 Muslim women lead religious groups (including the religiously unaffiliated principally atheists and agnostics) as having the highest fertility rate of 3.1 children per woman followed by Christianity at 2.7 and then the world average of 2.5.259 Unaffiliated are projected to have the highest positive net conversion (61.49 million), followed by Muslims (3.22 million), with Christians having the highest net loss (66.05 million).260 India is expected to have the highest Muslim population and sub-Saharan Africa having the highest Christian population at 4 of every 10 globally.261 Religiously affiliated (all religious groups [by 2010 prevalence including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, 256

MORRIS, Mitchell, GEORGE, Rebecca, “2017 global health care sector outlook” (Deloitte, 2016), https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/life-sciencesand-healthcare/articles/global-health-care-sector-outlook.html. 257 HACKETT, Conrad, et al., “The future of world religions: Population growth projections, 2010-2050” (Pew Research Center, 2015). 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid. 260 Ibid. 261 Ibid.

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adherents of folk religions and other religions, and Jews] minus the unaffiliated) are estimated to grow from 83.6% to 86.8%.262 Unaffiliated are expected to drop from 16.4% to 13.2% principally due to their lower fertility rate of 1.7 below the 2.0 children per woman replacement rate.263 A global bioethics intelligible to the world’s religions (including those affiliated and unaffiliated) is an absolute necessity for effective philosophical and thus political consensus particularly for AI-GNR. What we believe about the divine (whether God or gods exist or do not and what our relationship with God or gods is) frames what we believe about humanity (and how we ethically are supposed to act toward one another).

3.1.2. Global politics Politics flow from a community’s understanding of its good both personal and communal as the organizing vision (usually codified and informed through religion either as affiliated or unaffiliated with the correlative philosophical belief systems) that orders its relations including the body politic. This brings us to when politics goes wrong. Arguably the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since the founding of the UN is the Syrian civil war.264 By August 2015 it had claimed 250,000 lives and created 12 million Syrian refugees.265 The roots of this conflict and its current protracted course are firmly planted in the Arab Spring, which was the natural result of Middle Eastern economic and political trends building since WWII.266 Within 10 years of the war’s conclusion and ensuing exit of Western European powers from the Middle East (particularly the UK and France), the majority of the Muslim-majority Arab nations were independently governed by autocratic dynasty, tribal, military, or national secular party

Ibid. Ibid. 264 KI-MOON, Ban, “Third report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of member states in countering the threat” (United Nations, January 29, 2016), http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2016/92. 265 SECURITY COUNCIL, “Alarmed by continuing Syria crisis, Security Council affirms its support for special envoy’s approach in moving political solution forward,” United Nations, 2015, http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12008.doc.htm. 266 AISSA, El Hassane, “The Arab Spring: Causes, consequences, and implications” (United States Army War College, 2012), file:///C:/Users/Dominique/Downloads/ADA560779.pdf. 262 263

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leaders who prioritized large public sector-driven, oil production-based economies favorable to Western consumers.267 Additionally, the global institutions similar to the UN (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) in particular) initially required what would become nearly 30 years of failed austerity economic policies for these nations following the IMF and WB’s GDP-focused policies emphasizing national production at the expense of social welfare. The resulting economic ecosystem of the Middle East did produce trade surpluses,268 but it also created profound market instability due to the near non-existence of a robust, global private sector.269 For instance the world’s largest oil exporter as of 2017, Saudi Arabia, has massive dependence of its revenue on oil (85%).270 So as the global price of oil drops or oil-related conflicts increase, so does Arab economic instability.271 Yet this instability is not uniformly born by its citizens as its deliberate high oil production further lowers prices despite the recent 2017 (and recurrent) global plummet(s) in oil prices from $100 to $50 per barrel, forcing its major competitors in Iran and Russia to curb their production and thus their heavy government reliance on oil revenues.272 Oil market fluctuations can and have been capitalized on by nations able to shunt the greater economic and resulting political instability of oil fluctuations to neighboring competitors. As the post-WWII Cold War between the US and Russia led to heavy oil demands, the oil-rich Arab nations were there. And as the 1980s and early 1990s revolutions progressed in Eastern European 267

GROSS, Bernardino León, “Arab Spring: A European perspective,” (E.U. Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean, Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, November 9, 2011), http://clarke.dickinson.edu/bernardinoleon-gross/. 268 ABED, George, et al., “The Arab world in transition: Assessing the economic impact,” Institute of International Finance 2 (2011), http://assets.nationaljournal.com/pdf/050311_ArabReport.pdf. 269 MALIK, Adeel, AWADALLAH, Bassem, “The economics of the Arab Spring,” vol. 45 (Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, 2011), http://www.oxcarre.ox.ac.uk/files/OxCarreRP201179.pdf. 270 FAWAZ, Yassin K., “Why Saudi Arabia won’t cut its oil production,” Forbes, January 12, 2016, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/01/12/saudi-arabiaoil-production/. 271 ROTHER, Bjoern, et al., “The economic impact of conflicts and the refugee crisis in the Middle East and North Africa” (International Monetary Fund, September 16, 2016), https://market.android.com/details?id=book-GmAXDQAAQBAJ. 272 “Oil market report” (International Energy Agency, January 19, 2017), https://www.iea.org/media/omrreports/fullissues/2017-01-19.pdf.

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communist nations occurring during the Soviet Union’s collapse, the new rising rivalry between the US and China for global dominance with their associated oil needs concurrently developed along with the precipitating factors for the Arab Spring revolutions. The political consequences of this economic ecosystem were volatile human security concerns and internal confidence in Arab governments. The sources of Arab states’ stability following WWII up to 2008 were characterized by governments’ management of the economy and military security.273 Yet around the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates had a youth unemployment rate as high as 46%,274 while nearly all MENA nations were below the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI).275 These economic and political factors were finally ignited by the 2008 global economic crisis (caused largely by the American housing price bubble popping after a decade of reckless borrowing and failed regulatory and risk oversight).276 Plunging global markets drew downward Arab governments with their large public sectors largely based on oil, resulting in social welfare further deteriorating along with these populations’ confidence in their leaders to effectively and equitably respond to their needs. Thus the Arab Spring was born December 2010 with the Tunisian Revolution which led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ali (1936-present) in January 2011,277 followed one month later by the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak (1928present) during the Egyptian Revolution.278 Young Tunisia demonstrators 273

GARDNER, Frank, “Is the Arab Spring good or bad for terrorism?,” British Broadcasting Corporation, June 22, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldmiddle-east-13878774. 274 REGIONAL BUREAU FOR ARAB STATES, “Arab human development report 2009: Challenges to human security in the Arab countries” (United Nations Development Programme, December 1, 2008), https://market.android.com/details?id=book-b5BZOwAACAAJ. 275 SALEHI-ISFAHANI, Djavad, “Human development in the Middle East and North Africa: Human development research paper” (United Nations Development Programme, 2010), http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdrp_2010_26.pdf. 276 AISSA, El Hassane, “The Arab Spring: Causes, consequences, and implications” (United States Army War College, 2012), file:///C:/Users/Dominique/Downloads/ADA560779.pdf. 277 SPENCER, Richard, “Tunisia riots: Reform or be overthrown, US tells Arab states amid fresh riots,” The Telegraph, 2011. 278 KIRKPATRICK, David D., “Egypt calls in army as protesters rage,” The New York Times, 2011.

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opened the gates of the Arab Spring by decrying autocratic government corruption and abuse of power, food prices, and unemployment; they demanded these assaults against the person instead be replaced by democratic governments protecting human rights and competitive, accessible globalized private markets maximizing economic opportunities for even the worst off in the states.279 Arab leaders quickly sought to address similar economic and political instability trends within their borders through either diplomatic concessions or hardline opposition. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (1965-present) took the later. Under his watch, teenagers who painted revolutionary messages on their school wall in March of 2011 were tortured, triggering more demonstrators and further deadly military suppression.280,281,282,283 Peaceful Arab Spring demonstrators took up arms first to defend themselves from Assad’s security forces and then to repel the military from their communities. And so the Syrian Civil War began with the ensuing refugee crisis. The Syrian Civil War has defied resolution with the entrance of external actors into the conflict. As evidenced with the UN Security Council meetings on Syria and Libya, talks between US and European nations (who supported the Arab Spring bringing human rights through democracy and more accessible capitalist economies)284 broke down with Russia and China (who reportedly hesitated to risk their oil influence for MENA leadership changes).285 With Russia’s other Arab nation oil partner, Iran, under UN and 279

SPENCER, “Tunisia riots: Reform or be overthrown, US tells Arab states amid fresh riots.” 280 “Middle East unrest: Three killed at protest in Syria,” British Broadcasting Corporation, March 18, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12791738. 281 AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, “Syria’s Assad tightens grip after four years of war,” Daily Mail, March 12, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article2990998/Syrias-Assad-tightens-grip-four-years-war.html. 282 CNN WIRE STAFF, “Arab League to offer ‘safe exit’ if Assad resigns,” Cable News Network, July 22, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/22/world/meast/syriaunrest/index.html. 283 MROUE, Bassem, “Bashar Assad resignation called for by Syria sit-in acitivists,” The Huffington Post, April 18, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20110512045222/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/201 1/04/18/bashar-assad-resignation-syria-protest_n_850657.html. 284 OBAMA, Barack, “Obama’s speech in Cairo,” The New York Times, June 4, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html. 285 AISSA, El Hassane, “The Arab Spring: Causes, consequences, and implications” (United States Army War College, 2012),

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US sanctions for its nuclear program, Russia leveraged its’ Security Council veto to weaken UN sanctions against Syria and demands for the resignation of Assad,286,287 despite his war crimes documented by the UN.288 Both the EU and US appointed ambassadors in July and September of 2011 to help facilitate peaceful Arab regime transitions that would respect human rights.289 As the international community headed by the UN were indecisive in uniting around a common plan, the regional Arab nations of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey quickly moved into Syria to benefit from the economic and political instability.290 While the UN Security Council was slow to respond effectively, regional and certain international states were not. In addition to the Arab nations noted above, Russia in September of 2015 joined the assault by Assad with his security forces against the Syrian people in Russia’s first armed conflict outside of its borders since the Cold War concluded.291 The Russian entrance followed critical gains by rebels against Assad’s forces using US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi Arabian-provided tank destroying missiles.292 The then American president Barack Obama (1961file:///C:/Users/Dominique/Downloads/ADA560779.pdf. 286 Steve Gutterman, “Russia Says U.N. Syria Draft Unacceptable,” Reuters, January 27, 2012, http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE80Q0I620120127. 287 BORGER, Julian, INZAUURALDE, Bastien, “Russian vetoes are putting UN Security Council’s legitimacy at risk, says US,” The Guardian, September 23, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/23/russian-vetoes-putting-unsecurity-council-legitimacy-at-risk-says-us. 288 THE INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC, “Report on the Syrian Arab Republic” (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, September 6, 2016), http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/IndependentInternation alCommission.aspx. 289 AISSA, El Hassane, “The Arab Spring: Causes, consequences, and implications” (United States Army War College, 2012), file:///C:/Users/Dominique/Downloads/ADA560779.pdf. 290 BARKEY, Henri, PARSI, Trita, OTTAWAY, David, “Shifting dynamics between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran,” (The Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington D.C., December 23, 2011), https://www.c-span.org/video/?303278-1/relations-among-turkey-saudi-arabiairan. 291 TSVETKOVA, Maria, ZVEREV, Anton, “Ghost soldiers: The Russians secretly dying for the Kremlin in Syria,” Reuters, November 3, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-insightidUSKBN12Y0M6. 292 MAZZETTI, Mark, BARNARD, Anne, SCHMITT, Eric, “Military success in

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present) stated his opposition to making “Syria a proxy war between the US and Russia,” as evidenced by the steady drop in CIA missiles and eventual termination of the American training program for Syrian rebels.293 This more hands-off American approach better allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin (1952-present) to secure Russian conquest of greater Middle East power by ensuring its foothold there (including its Iranian alliance) outstrips that of the US.294 The power vacuum was filled by another regional become global actor— ISIL. The initial UN report described the “political and security instability” of Syria and Iraq with their ineffective governments allowed ISIL to rapidly conquer and control large areas.295 ISIL have demonstrated international human rights violations through torture, executions, and sexual slavery particularly against any dissenting community296 to achieve their primary objective of territorial control with its extremist Islamic ideology.297 But the latest UN report in September of 2016 demonstrated that growing UN and international pressure directed against ISIL had significantly weakened the terrorist organization by undermining its primary revenue source, oil. By taking its oil and land gains, UN pressure from member states resulted in increased global attacks directed or inspired by ISIL as its terrorists returned to their home nations, infiltrated others, or trained or inspired other nationals sympathetic to its extremist ideology. Its 2015 and 2016 deadly attacks in Paris, Istanbul, Brussels, Movida, Jakarta, and Miami among others evidence Syria gives Putin upper hand in U.S. proxy war,” The New York Times, August 6, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/world/middleeast/military-syria-putinus-proxy-war.html. 293 SHEAR, Michael, COOPER, Helene, SCHMITT, Eric, “Obama administration ends effort to train Syrians to combat ISIS,” The New York Times, October 9, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/middleeast/pentagon-programislamic-state-syria.html. 294 NASR, Vali, “Russia-Iran alliance complicates U.S. role in Syrian conflict,” interview by Robert Siegel, ({All Things Considered}, December 16, 2016), http://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/505892967/russia-iran-alliance-complicates-u-srole-in-syrian-conflict. 295 KI-MOON, Ban, “Third report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of member states in countering the threat.” 296 THE INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC, “Report on the Syrian Arab Republic.” 297 KI-MOON, Ban, “Third report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of member states in countering the threat.”

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the growing global threat posed to worldwide peace, security, and thus UN capacities to protect its member states and the entire global community. The oil-based Saudi Arabia-US alliance has been a long-standing post-WWII alliance recognized by Arab nations as a foundational stabilizing force in the Middle East given the common perceived Cold War threat of the former Soviet Union. Thus Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was criticized for damaging Arab diplomatic ties as Iran was viewed from the Arab perspective of being given unjustified economic boon through tens of billions of dollars in surging global commerce principally with oil access, which it in turn used to empower its greater military influence regionally including Iraq (destabilizing it and thus precipitating the emergence of ISIL as the deal began when Obama took office in 2008). The opposition both among Arab nations and within the US to the nuclear deal was bolstered by Iran being the world’s top state-sponsor of terrorism (per the US State Department 2016 rankings). The preceeding year saw 28,300 deaths from 11,774 terrorist attacks across 92 nations.298 The American leadership change from Obama to Donald Trump (1946present) in January of 2017 was cautiously welcomed by the Arab nations as an indication of stronger response to their perceived threat, Iran, which was seen as a “revolutionary theocracy” with its oil, arsenal, Russian political alliance, nuclear program even considering the nuclear deal, and its growing paramilitary alliances in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia that destabilized those nations and boosted Iran.299 This confidence was boosted even further by Trump’s first Secretary of Defense (and former Commander of the Unified Combatant Command overseeing American military in MENA and Central Asia), James Mattis (1950present), who asserted in his Senate confirmation hearings that Iran was “the biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East.” This tension among the Arab nations with Iran was on display during the late 2016 negotiations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an intergovernmental organization spanning Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela, Gabon, Angola, Ecuador, Nigeria,

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BUREAU OF COUNTERTERRORISM AND COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2015” (United States Department of State, June 2016), https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/258249.pdf. 299 MACLEAN, William, “Saudi Arabia is Very Optimistic about Trump,” Business Insider, January 23, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/r-glad-to-see-obama-gogulf-arabs-expect-trump-to-counter-iran-2017-1.

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Algeria, Libya, and the UAE.300 Iran holds the largest proved crude oil reserves among the Middle East after only Saudi Arabia, with crude oil exports accounting for half of all government revenue meaning that the recent oil price slump leading up to the above negotiations globally cut their exports in half since the 2012 US and EU sanctions.301 Once the ObamaIranian deal was struck and sanctions reversed in January of 2016, Iran’s oil exports doubled, flooding the already over-producing global oil market (after Saudi Arabia surged in the second quarter 2014 followed by Iraq in the second quarter 2015) to the point that OPEC and Russia agreed to limit production to 1.2 million barrels daily (from which Iran won an exemption).302 So by the time that Iran re-entered the oversaturated oil production market that January, the price per barrel had nose-dived from the West Texas Intermediate $133.88 per barrel in June of 2008 to $31.68 per barrel.303 Among multiple factors, this regional Arab competition appears to have been in response to the US surpassing Russia in 2012 and 2013 respectively to become the top natural gas and petroleum hydrocarbons internationally at 15,124 barrels per day compared to Saudi Arabia’s 11,948, Russia’s 11,035, and China’s 4,722 thanks to greater American production efficiency and shale gas and tight oil production.304 With these global economic and political trends at play, The Brookings Institution (1916-present), a top rated305 independent think tank frequently cited by media and government officials306 advocated to continue Obama’s 300

“OPEC: Brief History,” The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, accessed February 10, 2017, http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm. 301 TREFIS TEAM, “How Would the Iran Nuclear Deal Impact Oil Prices?,” Forbes, June 19, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/06/19/howwould-the-iran-nuclear-deal-impact-oil-prices/. 302 JAMES, Raymond, “Energy markets: We are at the tail end of a supply driven downturn” (Raymond James Energy Group, September 2016), https://pesa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/10/Energy-Markets-Praveen-Narra-Oil-and-Gas-1012016.pdf. 303 UNITED STATES ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, “Spot prices for crude oil and petroleum products” (United States Department of Energy, February 8, 2017). 304 UNITED STATES ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, “United States remains largest producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons” (United States Energy Deparment, May 23, 2016), http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26352. 305 MCGANN, James, “Global go to think tank index report” (University of Pennsylvania Lauder Institute, February 9, 2016). 306 GROSECLOSE, Tim, MILYO, Jeffrey, “A measure of media bias,” Quarterly

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shift from the Middle East to Asia given the rising Chinese competition for global dominance.307 Supporting data for this is the decreasing American dependence on foreign oil, the unsuccessful Israeli-Palestinian peace processes, and complex terrorism roots as seen with ISIL that only thins American economic and military resources in continual conflicts from unstable regional leadership. Further evidence supporting this shift is the rapidly closing gap between China and the US in AI, critical not only for the next era of military but also economic superiority.308 The disruptive effect of AI on global economies is similarly felt in Europe as its largest economy, Germany, is dependent on automobile manufacturing (Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW) as its largest economic sector at a time in which America’s Silicon Valley is rapidly overtaking its global market shares.309 AI-driven smartphone apps like Uber310 and electric vehicles (with growing promise for self-driving units) are surging into global markets out of Research and Development labs of the Valley.311 Currently Google as one of the world’s largest AI investors312 has double the market value of Germany’s three big manufacturers combined.313 This American firm in the last few years has purchased 11 AI companies, including DeepMind for Journal of Economics 120, no. 4 (November 1, 2005): 1191–1237. 307 BYMAN, Daniel L., “Shifting U.S. interests in the Middle East” (Brookings Institution, March 2, 2016), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/03/02/shifting-u-s-interests-in-themiddle-east/. 308 MARKOFF, John, ROSENBERG, MATHEW, “China’s intelligent weaponry gets smarter,” The New York Times, February 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/technology/artificial-intelligence-chinaunited-states.html. 309 EWING, Jack, SCOTT, Mark, “German automakers step up to Silicon Valley challenge,” The New York Times, February 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/business/germany-bmw-daimlervolkswagen-uber.html. 310 BENSINGER, Greg, “Uber in artificial-intelligence drive after buying startup,” The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-inartificial-intelligence-drive-after-buying-startup-1480942804. 311 PULIER, Eric, “How Google’s self-driving cars got way smarter in 2016,” Tech Co., February 6, 2017, http://tech.co/googles-self-driving-car-got-smarter-in-20162017-02. 312 NEWMAN, Daniel, “The world’s largest tech companies are making massive AI investments,” Forbes, January 17, 2017, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2017/01/17/inside-look-the-worldslargest-tech-companies-are-making-massive-ai-investments/. 313 EWING and SCOTT, “German automakers step up to Silicon Valley challenge.”

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$400 million as one of AI’s largest acquisitions, as it fights to overpower Facebook and Apple’s AI investments for the world’s best tech minds force multiplying their efforts through AI to develop faster, smarter, and more accurate technological performance. Despite rising competition from the German car manufacturers trying to catch-up, Google’s self-driving fleet (Waymo) leads the world in practical AI research into self-driving cars logging 500,000 real-world miles and 1 billion simulated miles in 2016 (more than all other companies combined). The practical significance for Google’s Waymo of its deep AI investments is that their cars beat their competitors to be the first to market (currently projected to start in 2018), by dropping their disengagements (when a human driver must re-take control of the vehicle) closer and closer to zero through simulating 10,000 miles with AI for every real-world mile driven, modifying a myriad of factors for each mile. These global political trends underscore key implications for future political trajectories. First, there is no global peace without protecting human rights. Second, there is no durable human rights protections without stable, accessible, and equitable economic participation for all people. Third, global economics drives politics and vice versa. Fourth and final, the global post-WWII economy and political order has been driven by the democratic and capitalist cooperation of American and its allies seeking to maintain supremacy over Russian and now Chinese communist controlled economies by owning infrastructure ingredients (particularly oil) for technological progress (particularly computing and now AI). These trends suggest religion (including as a normative system of culture-preserving personal and communal actions enshrining a community’s conception of the good [including whether there is a central one at all] with its correlative philosophies) which informs its economics (as the good is operationalized in daily relationships including financial ones) drive politics (as power is born and circles back to reinforce the shared conception of the good), including whether human rights are featured or even considered. But what are these economic trends particularly in health economics?

3.1.3. Global economics The Fortune 500 Global and Fortune 500 chronicle the most influential economic players in the world and in the US respectively by virtue of their dominating size affording them corresponding sway on nations and smaller

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companies.314 The Fortune 500 Global list details the world’s largest companies producing revenues which as of 2016 was $27.6 trillion with 67 million employees across 33 nations.315 Nearly half of global revenue was generated by the nation with the greatest number of top companies (the US with 134) followed by China (103). The majority of the top 10 of the Global 500 were dominated by 6 energy companies (three Chinese companies controlling #2-4 and $923 billion; Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Shell at #5 with $272 billion; American ExxonMobil at #6 with $246 billion; and British BP at #10 with $226 billion), followed by 2 automobile manufacturers (German Volkswagen at #7 with $237 billion; Japanese Toyota Motor at #8 with $237 billion), one retailer (US’ Walmart at #1 with $482 billion), and one technology company (American Apple at #9 with $234 billion). In the top 20, the biggest economic sectors were energy at #1 (35%), motor vehicles at #2 (25%), healthcare at #3 (15%), and others at #4 (technology at 10%, finance at 10%, and retailer at 5%). The Fortune 500 is the definitive log tracking the largest US companies comprising two-thirds of the US GDP, revenues of $12 trillion, and total employment of 27.9 million people globally. As with America owning the largest number of Fortune 500 Global companies, it similarly has the highest concentration of top health companies which collectively generated revenues of $1.1 trillion or 9.2% of the Fortune 500 total revenue in 2016. All of these American healthcare companies additionally hold slots in the top 150 of the Global 500. These companies’ combined revenue is greater than the GDP of 193 of the 195 nations internationally (with available GDP data per the World Bank)316 and 275% more than the average national GDP ($0.4 billion). If these American healthcare companies formed their own nation with their 1.1 million combined employees, they would be the third largest nation by GDP, after only the US ($18 trillion) and China ($11 trillion). The majority (six) of these American healthcare companies are medical drug/device distributors and retailers, with the remaining being insurance companies. The above global economics and specifically health economic statistics point to certain current and future trends. First, (1) healthcare seen as an economic sector—particularly the largest American companies contained 314

“Fortune 500 list 2016” (Fortune 500), accessed February 10, 2017, http://beta.fortune.com/fortune500. 315 “Fortune Global 500 list 2016.” 316 WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS, “GDP ranking” (The World Bank, January 17, 2002), http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GDP-ranking-table.

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within it—has an immense global influence given its staggering revenues compared to the collective GDP of nearly every nation on Earth. Second, (2) its pivotal ethical role influencing global politics has been largely unexplored despite its prominence after the world’s largest economic sector that trails only the energy and automobile sectors, and the likelihood of it following these sectors’ historical trends. The last 60 years of oil geopolitics following WWI with its associated gaspowered vehicles fueling global infrastructure growth demonstrate how struggles over controlling the raw materials for nations’ economic growth can erupt into full-blown conflict and horrific human rights violations and humanitarian crises. The case can be made of the current Syrian crisis is as a linear historical progression from the post-WWII Western ally nations (reliant on Arab autocratic rulers to maintain high oil production at the expense of their people). The Arab people’s demands were clear during the Arab Spring for unwavering defense of human rights, fair political rule via human rights-based democracies, and fair and reliable access to economic growth. Yet the long-standing unstable economic and political ecosystem in the Middle East (secondary to oil’s geopolitics) fueled what has become the bloody, protracted Syrian refugee crisis and global terrorism threat of ISIL. As the US gains more energy self-reliance through renewable energy and its tight oil and shale gas formation, it is projected that it along with its international allies will continue to shift focus away from the volatile Middle East. This can be expected to result in further regional instability and global terrorism as these nations struggle to diversify their economies away from oil in the face of falling global demand for their crude oil production. Thus as the healthcare economic sectors grows, is it not increasingly important for it to learn from the political economic trends of the sectors it trails to thus anticipate and adjust an effective ethics for it? In the increasingly AI and technology-dependent modern era, the global balance of power is expected to shift away from oil and production-centric focus and more to individual consumerism of technology including automobile/transportation and healthcare. This opens the way for renewed significance of individual health (as means of collective human capital) and consumption (as seen with the Chinese government’s recent economic restructuring and public incentives to increase their people’s consumption to approximate their American counterpart).317 As an emblematic case, these Chinese policies are designed to boost its economy by increasing household 317

“What’s next for China?” (McKinsey & Company, January 2013), http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/asia-pacific/whats-next-for-china.

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income, the private and service sectors, and the social welfare programs to the point that over the next 10 years private consumption is predicted to overtake government investment in production as the leading source of Chinese GDP. Wealthier, healthier households not only produce more economically, they also consume more goods and services from domestic and international companies. Thus, human capital with its necessary healthcare investment is gaining increased focus on the world stage as a global political strategy, evidenced by the policies of Chinas as the world’s second largest yet fastest growing trillion-dollar economy.318 As it gains ground, the US as the world’s largest economy (by consensus of most metrics) has been countering accordingly as seen with its increased oil production and growth of its AI-based technologies given its increased market share of the automobile and healthcare sectors. Yet the rate of American responses are dwarfed by China’s aggressive global expansion as it increasingly controls energy and mineral production, real estate, and financial capital internationally.319 Particularly in the world's’ most populous nation where 1 in every 7 people globally residens,320 human capital generates optimal return on investment when the domestic and global infrastructure for financial capital is generating stable, substantive returns already. This strategy is paying off for China as, notwithstanding the documented inaccuracies of Chinese self-reporting, the IMF in 2014 gave the reigning title of the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity to China ($17.6 trillion), moving it from the US economy ($17.4 trillion) which held that title since 1872 when it overtook the UK.321 Thus is it a coincidence that the first published report of CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering on human embryos came from a Chinese medical lab? The third and final trend of the above global political and economic phenomena is (3) rapid shifts in pro- and anti-human rights ideologies follow political and economic instability. The downfall of the League of 318

MAGNIER, Mark, “As growth slows, China highlights transition from manufacturing to service,” The Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-growth-slows-china-highlights-transition-frommanufacturing-to-service-1453221751. 319 MIDAS LETTER, “China vs America: An economic Cold World War,” Financial Post, August 25, 2016, http://business.financialpost.com/midas-letter/ china-vs-america-an-economic-cold-world-war. 320 DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMY AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, Population Division, “World population prospects: The 2015 revision: Volume II Demographic Profiles” (United Nations, 2015). 321 CARTER, Ben, “Is China’s economy really the largest in the world?,” BBC News, December 16, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483762.

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Nations followed Hitler’s rise, fueled by his effective manipulation of the German people’s economic hardships from the Great Depression and their lack of confidence in its Weimar Republic government.322 The Great Depression, despite its complex causative web and global influences, was accelerated by the unsustainable American consumerism and risky capital investments.323,324 And financially similarly though with the inverse approach to shared human rights, the 2008 Global Recession with the collapse of the American housing bubble contributed to the spark of the Arab Spring pushing for greater respect for the Arab people’s rights. The resulting Syrian Civil War and global dissemination of ISIL trained and inspired terrorists also are accompanied by widespread frustration with economic disparities and lack of confidence in existing governments. In Europe, the greater connectedness afforded by the EU and shared euro currency is increasingly questioned by member nations. The EU was formed after WWII to prevent future European conflict by greater political and economic connectedness.325 Current economic analysis as of 2016 documents though for instance that Italy’s economy has only been harmed by euro participation given its persistent zero growth and worsening exports on top of surging debt, forcing the nation to likely choose voluntary debt restructuring (which is questionable given its popular rejection of 2016 reforms)326 or leaving the EU as Great Britain voted to do.327 The similar political and economic gridlock in Greece means Italy’s early 2017 5.5% payments to its creditors from its economic output is topped only by Greece 322

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM. “Hitler Comes to Power.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed February 10, 2017. https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007671. 323 BLANCHARD, Olivier J., “The crisis: Basic mechanisms, and appropriate policies” (The International Monetary Fund, April 2009), doi:10.2139/ssrn.1324280. 324 ECONOMIST STAFF, “What can we learn from the Depression?,” The Economist, 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/11/economic-history-0. 325 EUROPA.EU STAFF. “The history of the European Union,” European Union, June 16, 2016, https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/history_en. 326 ZAMPANO, Giada, BALL, Deborah, “Italy rejects reforms, Matteo Renzi announces resignation,” Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/italy-votes-no-in-referendum-projections-indicate1480891355. 327 GUGLIELMI, Antonio, SUAREZ, Javier, SIGNANI, Carlo, MINENNA, Marcello, “Re-denomination risk down as time goes by” (Mediobanca Securities, January 19, 2017), http://marcello.minenna.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Italy2017-01-19.pdf.

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with their 6.1%. Their stagnant economic growth, deteriorating public confidence in their leadership, and resulting rising interest rates makes their full payment unlikely. Simply put, economic growth is not equitable among EU nations as richer nations grow but poorer nations do not, thus increasing financial disparities and political tensions. The February 2017 IMF report argued that debt relief for Greece from EU member nations along with additional Greek reforms are required to reverse this trend—a recommendation Europeans largely reject328 particularly as its top economy, Germany, is increasingly cautious about its own welfare given Britain’s vote to leave the EU while Germany’s automobile production supremacy is being challenged by the US. The growing EU unrest is similar to the 2010s American unrest culminating in the 2016 presidential victory of Trump over Hillary Clinton (1947present).329 Her husband, former President Bill Clinton (1942-present), signed the 1993 Executive Order 12850 to renew China’s most-favorednation (MFN) trade status conditional on their significant reduction of human rights violations,330 removed that human rights condition in 1994, then pushed for its entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and dropped the annual review of its human rights violations and weapons buildup,331 and finally backed the 2000 passage of the 106th Congress bill 4444 granting China permanent normal trading privileges.332 Economic analysis demonstrated that the 1990s trends culminating in the 2000 trade bill cost 328

THOMAS Jr., Landon, “Worries grow over euro’s fate as debts smolder in Italy and Greece,” The New York Times, February 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/business/dealbook/worries-grow-over-eurosfate-as-debts-smolder-in-italy-and-greece.html. 329 TUMULTY, Karen, et al., “Donald Trump wins the presidency in stunning upset over Clinton,” The Washington Post, November 8, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/election-day-an-acrimonious-race-reachesits-end-point/2016/11/08/32b96c72-a557-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html. 330 SCIOLINO, Elaine, “Clinton and China: How promise self-destructed,” The New York Times, May 29, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/29/world/clinton-andchina-how-promise-self-destructed.html. 331 SANGER, David E., “How push by China and U.S. business won over Clinton,” The New York Times, April 15, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/15/world/how-push-by-china-and-us-businesswon-over-clinton.html. 332 SCHMITT, Eric, KAHN, Joseph, “The China trade vote: A Clinton triumph; House, in 237-197 vote, approves normal trade rights for China,” The New York Times, May 25, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/25/world/china-tradevote-clinton-triumph-house-237-197-vote-approves-normal-trade-rights.html.

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America 2 million jobs and a 1,428% ballooning of the trade deficit from $22.7 billion in 1993 to $347 billion in 2016333 as outsourcing rushed to China, benefiting its economy and wealthy American business owners at the expense of poor Chinese workers’ conditions and middle-class American production workers’ jobs. The popular anger from the above economic disenfranchisement (as backlash from globalization) was made concrete in the 2016 populist and protectionist politicians and policies that contributed to Trump’s presidential victory. Yet the anger was global as seen with Great Britain’s majority vote to exit the EU, the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and the growing support for the 2017 French presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen (1968-present).334 In America in particular, further popular frustrations with healthcare-related economic disparities helped fuel Trump’s rise to power as his predecessor’s Affordable Care Act (according to Trump’s electorate majority) only worsened their medical care’s affordability and accessibility.335 President Trump then doubled down on public anger against globalization by focusing on domestic economic growth; steady improvements in American business revenues followed when then inspired investors particularly in the finance and energy sectors to pour capital into the US stock market, setting new record highs just months after the November 2016 election with continued climbs heading into February 2020.336 Then on March 1, 2017, the American Dow Jones continued its surge past the historic 21,000 ceiling alongside Great Britain’s London FTSE 100 index which similarly reached record highs; this placed the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index up 12% since Trump’s election as of that March at an unprecedented rapid growth rate.337 As he demonstrated increasing number 333

UNITED STATS CENSUS BUREAU, “Trade in goods with China,” April 21, 2009, https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html. 334 SHUSTER, Simon, “How populism is splitting Europe,” Time Magazine, December 8, 2016, http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-populism/. 335 KLIFF, Sarah, “Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump,” Vox, December 13, 2016, http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/13/13848794/kentuckyobamacare-trump. 336 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, “Strong company earnings drive US stock indexes to new highs,” The New York Times, February 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/02/09/world/asia/ap-financialmarkets.html. 337 IRWIN, Neil, “What booming markets are telling us about the global economy,”

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of concrete policies since his election to grow jobs and infrastructure, cut regulations and corporate taxes, and batter global trade partners for better agreements, investors responded with their confidence and their capital. The Dow Jones, one of the oldest and most accepted indices of US stock market performance, exceeded the 20,000-point threshold after Trump’s election for the first time since its 1896 founding.338 Despite the concerning ethical controversies of Trump personally and politically, his majority base that elected him continued (as of the 2020 revision of this work) to support him given the economic boom attributed to him. The American and European leaders who gained or lost in 2016 and 2017 did so based on their prowess to turn former popular support for globalization into distrust of it by arguing for its supposed effects destabilizing their domestic economies and security through lost jobs and greater terrorism (and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic originating in China). So given these above global demographic, political, and economic trends toward instability amid the ideological struggle between protectionism/isolationism and free trade/globalism, what can ensure stable, sustainable human development?

3.1.4. Global anthropology, evolutionary biology, & philosophy An anthropological analysis of evolutionary biology’s findings helps explain the historical human oscillation between tribalism and connectedness (which will be key to understanding our later ethical analysis of AI-GNR in the concrete pluralistic cultural and political economic context). Anthropology, as the study of human cultures and societies with their associated developments,339 seeks to identify the structure of human nature and the associated social structure through traits and trends across time (with the above influential definition taken from the Oxford Dictionary, this is a predominantly Anglo-Saxon conception within the broader European conception also incorporating philosophy and theology). Tribalism as a form of social organization has been manifest since man’s The New York Times, March 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/upshot/what-booming-markets-are-tellingus-about-the-global-economy.html. 338 DOW JONES STAFF. “Dow Jones Industrial Average fact sheet” (S&P Dow Jones Indices, January 2017), http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/downloads/fact_info/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Av erage_Fact_Sheet.pdf. 339 “Anthropology,” Oxford Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2017), https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/anthropology.

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beginning and continues to this day with social identity and reciprocal exchange reinforced by cultural and religious traditions, education, communication patterns, and financial interdependence.340 Behaviors and thought patterns secondary to a common identity as a tribe thus are continually strengthened to foster loyalty to sustaining the social group (page 90).341,342 Tribalism confers evolutionary advantage on humans given their natural sociability, extended childhood periods of vulnerability (to disease, violence, and resource scarcity), and inadequate individual capacities on average to survive without communities (page 43).343 Biological evidence supports this focused social connectedness by demonstrating the number of members in a social group determines the size of the primate brain’s neocortex.344 Anthropologist Robin Dunbar (1947-present) proposes the cognitive limit to the number of distinct, stable relationships among humans is 150 (“Dunbar’s number”) (pages 177-181).345,346 Further anthropological research by Peter Killworth (1946-2008 A.D.) and H. Russell Bernard (1940-present) argue that the mean number may be up to 290, with their Bernard-Killworth median being 230.347,348,349 Clinical data further substantiates the influence of tribalism in social networks as a 2007 landmark New England Journal of Medicine article demonstrated that obesity spreads through up to 3 degrees of separation from a person once 340 JAMES, Paul Warren, NADARAJAH, Yaso, HAIVE, Karen, Sustainable communities, sustainable development: Other paths for Papua New Guinea (University of Hawai‫ދ‬i Press, 2012). 341 ঋEKƖ, Kanakasena, Assam’s crisis: Myth & reality (Mittal Publications, 1993). 342 “Tribalism,” Macmillan Dictionary, 2017, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/tribalism. 343 ISAACS, Harold Robert, Idols of the tribe: Group identity and political change (Harvard University Press, 1975). 344 DUNBAR, Robin, How many friends does one person need?: Dunbar’s Number and other evolutionary quirks (Faber & Faber, 2010). 345 GLADWELL, Malcolm, The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference, vol. 20 (New York City, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2006). 346 DUNBAR, Robin, “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates,” Journal of Human Evolution 22, no. 6 (June 1992): 469–93. 347 BERNARD, H. Russell, “Honoring Peter Killworth’s contribution to social network theory,” vol. 28 (University of Southhampton, 2006), http://nersp.osg.ufl.edu/~ufruss/. 348 MCCARTY, Christopher, et al., “Comparing two methods for estimating network size,” Human Organization 60, no. 1 (2001): 28–39. 349 BERNARD, H. Russell, SHELLEY, Gene Ann, KILLWORTH, Peter, “How much of a network does the GSS and RSW dredge up?,” Social Networks 9, no. 1 (1987): 49–61.

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she/he becomes obese, with a person having 37-57% increased odds of developing obesity if their spouse, sibling, or friends becomes obese.350 Wojtyla’s Thomistic-Aristotelian philosophical anthropology adds a deeper element to this conversation from the standpoint of his personalism affected by his resulting Christian anthropology that proposes an account of humanity extending to non-Christians. Wojtyla’s insistence that man is a social being plays out in his description of the person’s communicable and noncommunicable natures noted above. The communicable nature describes how tribalism functions as persons are drawn not purely for evolutionary but also for teleological purposes toward social organization. Wojtyla builds this account by tracing the philosophical legacy of his anthropology from Aristotle’s Politics through Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae I-II 94.2. Aquinas noted that political societies, as social organization among individuals with specified rules of behavior oriented toward peaceful and productive coexistence, are bound by natural law as a participation in the divine law given by God.351 This natural law is knowable by right reasons which apprehends and expounds on natural inclinations (protecting human life, reproduction, and education) and rational inclinations (to “know the truth [particularly] about God,” “shun ignorance,” and “live in society”). For evolutionary biology, the political and economic trends noted above appear straightforward to explain. Tribal individuals unite in nations and protect their economic and political interests at the expense of other nations because this helps ensure their self-preservation. For Wojtyla however, this ignores the greater reality of humanity’s experience and yearning for that which is more than simple food, shelter, clothing, and security. A person yearns to live forever and pursue the things that are forever like truth, goodness, beauty, and love. And it is this constant tension within the person that explains across peoples and epochs the oscillation between tribalism and connectedness, self-preservation and self-giving, the individual good solely and the additional common good, and might (or power as in the preChristian Roman Empire, Neitzsche, and Rawls) and right (i.e. Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wojtyla).

350

CHRISTAKIS, Nicholas A., FOWLER, James H., “The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years,” The New England Journal of Medicine 357, no. 4 (July 26, 2007): 370–79. 351 AQUINAS, Thomas, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of The English Dominican Province (Christian Classics, 1981 {1485}).

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A compatible account in the same Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition explaining this tension is the Thomistic argument of fittingness for evolutionary creation by the biologist and philosopher Nicanor Austriaco (1968-present). This teleological argument seeks to philosophically reverse engineer a conclusion—beginning from an end and then examine how it is reached more aptly by certain means over others. Aquinas argued from the end of efficiently reaching a destination such that it is fitting to ride a horse instead of the other possible means of walking to achieve that end when viewed from the perspective of efficiently reaching a destination (III.1.2).352 This argument is a non-demonstrative philosophical theology technique—it does not prove the truth of a conclusion but rather maps out the inner logic of a conclusion so that a divine truth becomes intelligible to man.353 Taking an example at the intersection of Judaism and Christianity, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews argues that it was “fitting [İʌȡİʌİȞ] that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10).354 This method starts from a philosophically observable theological conclusion and then deduces the appropriateness of its means mechanistically, similar to the deductive scientific method that starts from physical observable conclusions and reasons backwards to their mechanisms. Now it should be noted that evolution to which Austriaco applies Aquinas’ fittingness argument is not a proven scientific truth . It is strictly speaking a scientific theory, albeit one that has great empirical evidence for its truthfulness amid insufficient evidence to support an alternative account. Evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882 A.D.)355 and detailed in his seminal work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, proposes natural selection-driven evolution as the means for which the natural diversity of life in its present form exists after millennia of more primitive life forms forced through threats of extinction to adapt for self-preservation.356 The scientific method, by which it was devised, 352

Ibid. AUSTRIACO, Nicanor Pier Giorgio, et al., Thomistic evolution: A Catholic approach to understanding evolution in the light of faith (Tacoma, Washington: Cluny Media, 2016). 354 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 355 LARSON, Edward John, Evolution: The remarkable history of a scientific theory (New York, NY: Modern Library, 2004). 356 DARWIN, Charles, The origin of species: 150th anniversary edition. London, 353

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prohibits by its internal methodological limitations (i.e. to only deal with the observable material university) precludes it from being applicable to philosophy or theology and thus the ability to assess prove whether or not God or any other named supernatural being was/is the initial and/or guiding cause of its gradual development. The proper domain of elucidating scientific realities is that of science, and evolutionary realities is that of evolutionary biology. It is philosophy and theology’s job to determine if there is a God and if this divine being governs creation at least partially through evolution. Now let us examine Austriaco’s argument. What is the end of evolutionary creation? It is firs taken to mean the result from acts of God to create all living creatures through the means of evolution and continually guide their development, which is known through systematic philosophical inquiry into this theological conclusion.357 The theological response provided by the Catholic Christian Church, as representative of the majority of the Christian denominations, is that God created to exhibit and communicate his glory— “The world was made for the glory of God” (number 293).358 Per Aquinas, God communicates His glory to creatures by invitation to participate in his existence (which is his very essence) and in his instrumental causality (not His primary causality but rather in governing creation that is already given) (I.103.6).359 God as Father creates man and woman in His own image, and they through mutual self-giving are co-creators with God as they create children through sexual intercourse (designed to be) in the sacramental context of marriage. They then raise and educate those children in virtue through the proper use of their will and intellect ordered toward the good, namely eternal union with God, and in doing so find their happiness. Austriaco therefore argues that it was fitting that God brought forth all life unfolding through evolution rather than through special creation (spontaneous immediate generation of all life in its full and current form of diversity). His creatures and material universe could therefore share in his instrumental causality, He could more fully communicate to his creation his perfection, and thus more fully exhibit his glory. This more complete demonstration of God’s glory is not like the tyrants and iconic rulers of man. Napoléon wanted parades and statues to immortalize his fame; God (so the United Kingdom (New York: Signet, 2003 {1859}). 357 AQUINAS, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. 358 “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church, 1993, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM. 359 AQUINAS, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas.

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argument goes) wants accepted invitations and man’s trust to make the human family immortal in their happiness. Pharaoh seized men as slaves to put his image on stone by whip and starvation. God beckons man as a father puts his daughter on his lap and with his hands over hers, teachers her to write by guiding the pen. They create a love letter, together, gradually. As love by its nature swells up and cries out to be shared, a father is happiest when he can share his joy with his daughter by her sharing in his life and so his happiness becoming her own. Per Aquinas, “If God governed alone, things would be deprived of the perfection of causality. Wherefore all that is affected by many would not be accomplished by one” (I.103.6).360 The Primary Cause, God, who alone can create ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) gives instrumental causality to His creatures so they can co-create unique, diverse sub-creations from the material universe (responsive to environmental pressures he permits or creates) and so allow the beautiful, staggering diversity of life to unfold. There are two remaining implications for the fittingness argument applied to creation in general. First, God’s evolutionary creation was fitting in that it was the most efficient means to produce resilient diverse life adaptive to ecological niches through non-personal instrumental causes. Over 3.5 billion years of Earth history, four billion species have differentiated to the present eight million species currently effectively surviving in their niches. And second, the vast diversity of created life better reflects God’s perfection: God…produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature whatever (I.47.1).361

The application of this fittingness argument applied to human evolution illuminates gaps in what evolutionary biology and anthropology can explain about modern pendulum-like human economics and politics. Within this evolutionary creative process, God created the first man and woman as good, in perfect harmony with Him, each other, and creation in a state of original justice (one wonders if Rawls took this as inspiration for his original position) and preserved it as such by sanctifying grace (numbers 399 and

360 361

Ibid. Ibid.

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374).362 Aquinas argued that God additionally gave our first human parents preternatural gifts to strengthen their natural weakness and so perfect them as made in the image and likeness of God: immortality, integrity, and knowledge. As humans are naturally corruptible and vulnerable to death’s separation of their metaphysical composite of body and soul (a separation caused later by original sin), immortality was given them. As they are naturally vulnerable to interior disorder of their bodily desires fighting for control over the spirit’s reason, God gave them integrity to choose wisely. And as they are naturally slow to know reality fully which may harm their ability to choose wisely, they were given knowledge. These gifts per Aquinas freed them from suffering spiritually or physically. Yet our first humans so they argument goes lost these gifts along with original justice and union with God. The 1546 A.D. Council of Trent detailed in the Doctrine of Original Sin that Adam and Eve as the first human parents disobeyed God and subsequently their progeny inherited the metaphysical not biologic lack of grace and preternatural gifts which God originally intended for all future humans to possess from Adam and Eve. God therefore sent His son, Jesus Christ, as the new Adam to redeem the human family as God became man in Jesus to make man sons and daughters again of the Divine Father (number 410 and 389). Austriaco builds on Aquinas to argue that it was fitting for God to additionally endow the first humans in the meantime with preteradaptive gifts to perfect their natural inherited tendencies from their primate ancestors (in tandem with their tendencies deriving from their body-soul nature for which they were given their preternatural gifts).363 These gifts of love, peace, and knowledge were therefore meant to overcome man’s natural primitive tendencies toward promiscuity, violence, and deceit. Of note these primitive tendencies did not have moral dimensions prior to the first ensoulment and thus the creation of the first human persons from their primitive ape ancestors; they were simply and respectively mammalian survival techniques of reproduction independent of concerns for monogamy as part of larger later moral criteria for morally justifiable sexual interaction, the use of force independent of concerns for proportionality and other later moral criteria for morally justifiable force, and communication independent of concerns for deliberate accuracy in reporting as part of larger later moral criteria for truthfulness. Thus, Austriaco’s description of the primitive 362

“Catechism of the Catholic Church.” AUSTRIACO, Nicanor Pier Giorgio, “A theological fittingness argument for the historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens,” Nova et Vetera (English Edition) 13, no. 3 (July 2015): 651. 363

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tendencies does not contradict the larger Catholic philosophical arguments and theological doctrines for instance of creation’s goodness despite the existence of original sin communicated to each subsequent generation of humans as “transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice” following the first “personal sin” of Adam and Eve that resulted in their passage into a “fall state” (article 1, paragraph 7, number 404). So how did these gifts unfold for humans? Strong genetic and geologic evidence detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports this historical transition with the Out-of-Africa Model; Homo Erectus primates began in 1.8 million B.C. in southern Africa, evolved to 10,000 Homo Sapiens (modern humans) around 200,000-150,000 B.C., and then migrated in 60,000 B.C. eventually throughout all of Asia, Europe, and the Americas in search of food, shelter, and security.364 Migration would have been evolutionarily mandated since it was not until 14,000 B.C. that agriculture would support anything more than a few hundred tribal members in one community. Yet it is one thing to look anatomically human and another to act as one; a monkey in the zoo may groom her/his offspring, but we are more likely to recognize it as human actions when a human mother combs her daughter’s hair while speaking encouraging words of guidance and support to her daughter on her wedding day. Evolutionary biologist, Jared Diamond (1937-present), proposed the Great Leap Forward to explain the evolution from anatomically human in 200,000 B.C. to behaviorally human.365 Symbolic thought and language, necessary for the this leap via the emergence of culture and the modern understanding of human behavior, appears to have first developed in 75,000 B.C. in the southern African Blombos Cave possessing the first known instances of artifacts in the form of paintings, carvings, engravings, music, and physical decoration. Early evidence further supports that a single proto-language developed as far as 25,000 years before that in central/southern Africa as the foundation for all future languages up to the present day.366 This archaeological data is supported by biological data explaining this Leap as 364

HENN, Brenna M., CAVALLI-SFORZA, L.L., FELDMAN, Marcus W., “The great human expansion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109, no. 44 (October 30, 2012): 17758–64. 365 TATTERSALL, Ian, “Human evolution and cognition,” Theory in Biosciences = Theorie in Den Biowissenschaften 129, no. 2–3 (September 2010): 193–201. 366 ATKINSON, Quentin D., “Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa,” Science 332, no. 6027 (April 15, 2011): 346–49.

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the result of brain structures that adequately evolved with at least ten genetic mutations to allow development for language capacity.367 These mutations, including those for MCPH1, ASPM, and CNTAP2 genes, not only demonstrate markers of natural selection—they also uniquely signal human genes. Human language made possible the earliest schools including the 6th century B.C. Pakistan Taxila (Sanskrit ćƗĮĚĕĭ), (page 185 pages 1032-1056)368,369 the 4th century B.C. Greek Platonic Academy, and the 2nd century B.C. Chinese Confucian Taixue (page 50).370 These schools featured both physical and spiritual study of the universe, as behaviorally human thinkers reflected on what it meant to be human, including the study of God or the Creator (theology including metaphysics) as man’s primary cause as the chief of the disciplines. Their intellectual descendants, the High Middle Age universities of Western Europe including the earliest in Bologna, Oxford, and Paris were born of the Catholic monasteries (and continued the tradition of philosophy and theology atop all the disciplines) and eventually birthed the modern university model.371 These early universities from the 11th-13th centuries A.D. were ordered by the Trivium (rhetoric, logic, grammar) and later Quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music)—as outlined by Plato and explicitly chronicled by the 6th century Roman philosopher, Boethius (480-524 A.D.)372—comprising the seven liberal arts that prepared students for philosophy (the “Handmaid of the Sciences”) and eventually for theology (the “Queen of the Sciences”) (page 56).373 The 367

SOMEL, Mehmet, LIU, Xiling, KHAITOVICH, Philipp, “Human brain evolution transcripts, metabolites and their regulators,” Nature Reviews. Neuroscience 14, no. 2 (February 2013): 112–27. 368 REAGAN, Timothy, Non-Western educational traditions: Indigenous approaches to educational thought and practice (Sociocultural, political, and historical studies in education), 3 edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004). 369 CHITNIS, Sunna, “Higher education,” ed. E. Veena Das, The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/23443635?selectedversion=NBD24601120. 370 YAO, Xinzhong, An introduction to Confucianism, Kindle (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 371 Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe: Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 372 D. C. Gilman, H. T. Thurston, and F. M. Colby, eds., “Quadrivium,” New International Encyclopedia, 1905. 373 Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern

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other disciplines of study brought to philosophy their insights (into the applied principles governing the physical universe) so it could seek the higher metaphysical principles behind them before theology as the capstone of study would seek the highest, supernatural, or before-physical principles behind all the principles. So to recover the art of liberal arts to truly understand a cause or principle, let us attempt a theological/metaphysical synthesis of the above evolutionary biology, anthropology, and philosophical insights detailed above. Following God’s evolutionary creation of the material universe over the 14 billion years since the Big Bang,374 Earth’s biologic evolution over the last 3.5 billion years, and primate evolution over the last 1.8 million years, anatomically modern humans emerged in 100,000 B.C. with the neurocognitive developed capacity of language and abstract thinking due to ten genetic mutations according to his unfolding and continually guided plan. The first two human persons received from God the gift of an immortal soul, sanctifying grace, and preternatural and preteradaptive gifts. Their turning away from this loving Father meant them lost grace and gifts (they rejected when they rejected Him) but not His mercy. This Creator-Father sought for the resulting 100 millennia through His son, Jesus Christ, and his Catholic Church (with the resultant dialogue with all affiliated and unaffiliated religions) to appeal to natural law and human longings within all people in every culture and religion to see within their communities and belief systems a common desire for restored communion with the divine and thus each other made possible through loving commitment to their community. It was the evolutionary advantageous traits of language and abstract thought of these common human parents that empowered them to grow, develop, and expand throughout the world down to the modern moment. The preteradaptive gifts helped the human family be increasingly human and moral, made in the image and likeness of God (and progressively less primitive and immoral) by being more faithful to their spouses, less violent to their neighbors, and more inclined to know and conform to the truth. Adultery, war, and deceit still occur as these primitive inclinations are not extinguished and immorality persist. So we as a species oscillate between fear and love, selfishness and generosity, exclusivity and inclusivity since Africa but in a steady upward path toward the fulfillment of our human nature inscribed on our hearts that are restless until they are one with the Supreme Goodness that gives man meaning. This is German University (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006). 374 “Age of the universe,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, December 21, 2012, https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html.

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Austriaco’s controversial but comprehensive and thus adequate argument of the person (anthropologically and biologically that is concurrently philosophically and theologically compatible). To be inadequate it would need to be limited and/or indefensible, neither which claim has been sustained to date by critics as its Thomistic framework has been disbelieved but not disproved particularly by modern philosophy.

3.1.6. Adequate anthropology-informed global political economics So we arrive at an adequate anthropology-informed political economy to better understand how humans developed from African tribes to global societies. International institutions such as the World Bank are increasingly relying on the applied discipline of political economy to understand human behavior at the individual, state, and international level through the interplay of financial exchange and political governance.375 A key example is the free trade-based globalization in the post-WWII era, forged by a united fear (of war) and international institutions (to prevent it) including the UN and human rights-based international law.376 Free trade was the dominant underlying economic policy in this current period stretching to today in which trade, capital, and workers flow freely across state borders as richer nations benefit (from poorer nations with cheaper labor) in addition to poorer nations (who reciprocally receive capital influx to lift their societies as a whole financially). Greater economic interdependence was meant to translate into greater political interdependence to replace inter-state conflict for “when goods cannot cross borders, armies will,” according to the French liberal economist, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850 A.D.).377 Empirical economic data demonstrates that the ratio of benefits to losses for free trade in contrast to protectionism in US dollars is 100 to 1.378 The overwhelming benefit of 375

FRITZ, Verena, “What a political economy perspective can contribute to development effectiveness,” The World Bank, February 14, 2012, http://blogs.worldbank.org/governance/what-a-political-economy-perspective-cancontribute-to-development-effectiveness. 376 MARTIN, Will, “Deutsche Bank: ‘Bye, bye globalisation,’” Business Insider, November 8, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.my/deutsche-bank-research-onreaching-peak-globalisation-2016-11/. 377 DILORENZO, Thomas J., “Biography of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850): Between the French and Marginalist Revolutions” (Mises Institute, August 1, 2007), https://mises.org/library/biography-frederic-bastiat-1801-1850-between-frenchand-marginalist-revolutions. 378 MAGEE, Stephen P., International trade and distortions in factor markets (New York, NY: Macel-Dekker, 1976).

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free trade comes from the greater production of jobs over losses from its acceleration of a state’s comparative advantage according to the Nobel economist, Paul Krugman (1953-present).379 States have differential trade gains from their differential technological progress or factor endowments (entrepreneurship, labor, capital, or land useable for manufacture) (page 1).380 This comparative advantage leads to greater trade gains for a state as it produces a similar good another state can produce but for lower opportunity cost (the value of choosing the next best alternative choice).381 This concept of comparative advantage has been accepted as a principle driver of international trade since its formulation by David Ricardo (17721823 A.D.).382 International bodies since WWII including the WTO have embraced these insights and fostered the commitment of most developed nations to replace protectionist trade policies with free trade.383 On the world stage, free trade has been increasingly shown to confer evolutionary benefit by greater economic prosperity and state security for behaviorally modern humans since their emergence of the African continent as the preteradaptive gifts enable these former primates to seek mutual peace based on empirically verified international political economic policy. Yet primitive tribal instincts and immorality still run deep. Free trade since WWII grew for instance with capital flows into the US reaching their highest point in 2008, but when the housing bubble burst and the global recession began, the GDP percentage of world exports began falling, new trade deals plummeted, and protectionist policies surged.384 Following the April 2009 free trade commitment of the G20 (the world’s 20 largest states by economic size),385 all but 3 of these nations reverted back to protectionist 379

KRUGMAN, Paul, “The accidental theorist,” Slate, February 18, 2010, https://market.android.com/details?id=book-DNRS1rbO5IQC. 380 MANESCHI, Andrea, Comparative advantage in international trade: A historical perspective, vol. 22 (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998). 381 STAFF, “Opportunity cost,” Investopedia, November 24, 2003, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/opportunitycost.asp. 382 SURANOVIC, Steve, International trade: Theory and policy (Washington, D.C.: The Saylor Foundation, 2010). 383 FOUDA, Regine Adele Ngono, “Protectionism & free trade: A country’s glory or doom?,” International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance 3, no. 5 (10/2012): 351–55. 384 MARTIN, “Deutsche Bank: ‘Bye, bye globalisation.’” 385 EVENETT, Simon J., FRITZ, Johannes, “The tide turns? Trade, protectionism, and slowing global growth: The 18th global trade alert report” (Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2015), http://www.globaltradealert.org/gta-analysis/tide-turnstrade-protectionism-and-slowing-global-growth.

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policies with a resulting $50 billion lost to the world economy in just the one year following their enactment.386 As political leaders in the 2010s saw their voting majorities increasingly fearful of jobs lost to foreign competing states, they demanded immediate protection from their leaders (even at the expense of long-term prosperity and peace). Tribalism at the state level, translated into economics, is protectionism— policies designed through tariffs and trade restrictions to supposedly better protect domestic workers and businesses from competitive foreign exporters by reducing foreign exports, boosting domestic goods and service competitiveness, and thus improving national trade deficits.387 Such policies were the dominant economic paradigm of the US as the largest postWWII economy from its founding up to WWII.388 As Great Britain imposed heavy protectionist tariffs on the American colonies in the 40 years leading up to the American Revolution, their trade deficit with Britain grew 10 times up to 739,000 pounds (page 67).389 Winning the war to earn economic and political independence for the comparative advantage-rich colonies, the new US had its first president, George Washington (1731-1799 A.D.), sign the 1789 Tariff Act to protect new American industries in the name of domestic security.390 Politics and economics were intertwined in political economy as Washington was convinced economic independence not only gave greater political negotiation power on the world stage through decreased inter-state dependence but also provided war material resources should economics and diplomacy fail. Yet protectionism has been implicated as a major war cause as seen with its prevalent underpinning of Europe’s mercantile nations which constantly warred with each other in the 1600-1800s, spilling over into the American Revolution and later WWI and WWII.391

386

GREGORY, Rob, et al., “Trade and the crisis: Protect or recover: IMF staff position note” (International Monetary Fund, April 16, 2010). 387 Douglas Lippoldt, ed., “Policy priorities for international trade and jobs” (OECD, 2012), https://www.oecd.org/site/tadicite/policyprioritiesforinternationaltradeandjobs.htm. 388 LIND, Michael, “Free trade fallacy,” Prospect, January 20, 2003, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/freetradefallacy. 389 MORRISON, Spencer, America betrayed (Edmonton, Canada: Outremer Publisher, 2016). 390 MORRISON, Spencer P., “Protectionist presidents—America’s hidden trade history,” National Economics Editorial, December 22, 2016, http://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2016/12/22/americas-protectionisthistory/. 391 DILORENZO, “Biography of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850): Between the French

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But what if states do not have to choose between free trade and protectionism? What if this political economic debate reveals a key insight into global peace through the lens of evolutionary biology and anthropology? As we evolved from our non-human primate ancestors, the primitive tendencies of sexual interaction, physical force, and communication irrespective of accuracy (initially reverted to for survival) increasingly were understood in moral terms for our later human ancestors as violence, promiscuity, and deceit (personally to be avoided and politically punishable in varying degrees). Human tribes became cities then states, shifting gradually from continual war to growing periods of stability, turning spears into plowshares as inter-dependence grew between tribes concurrent with the increasing development of religion/theology and philosophy/ethics with man’s abstract thinking seeking the Divine Mind and objective conceptions of the good. These conceptions framed politics and ethics and thus what was moral and so proper human conduct. The Jewish prophet, Isaiah ben Amoz (740-700 B.C.), recognized by the world’s largest monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism)392,393 exhorted his 8th century B.C. Israelite nation as they rebuilt their homeland after the destructive Babylonian exile394 as chronicled in the Book of Isaiah (Hebrew: ʥʤʕʩ ʍˆ ʔˇ ʍʩ) (page 13-17): In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say: Come, let us go up to the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways,…He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again (Isaiah 2:2-4).395

Abraham (Hebrew: ʭ ʕʤʸʕ ʍʡ ʔʠ, 1800-1600 B.C.), recognized by all three of these monotheist religions as their patriarch (page 5),396 is credited with founding and Marginalist Revolutions.” 392 CAMPO, Juan Eduardo, Encyclopedia of Islam, Encyclopedia of World Religions (New York, NY: Checkmark Books, 2009). 393 ICONS, Dormition Skete, The lives of the holy prophets, 1 edition (Denver, CO: Holy Apostles Convent Publisher, 1998). 394 JONG, Matthijs, Isaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets: A comparative study of the earliest stages of the Isaiah tradition and the Neo-Assyrian prophecies, Supplement edition (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2007). 395 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 396 ANDREWS, Stephen J., “Abraham,” ed. Watson E. Mills and Roger Aubrey

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Judaism as the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, believing in one God in a time where many gods were recognized.397 This mysterious God reportedly called Abraham out of Haran (Hebrew: ʯʸʕ ʕʧ), a city in ancient Upper Mesopotamia in modern day Turkey near the Syrian border, to go to what is now known as Israel: The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you (Genesis 12: 1-4).398

From Abraham, the Jewish people and Judaism grew, led by their military leaders into armed conflict with warring neighboring nations to protect their new lands. But unlike other nations, they were increasingly cajoled by prophets reportedly sent by this mysterious God to prepare them for an unknown peace even with those outside their tribe, a peace in which “[a]ll nations shall converge at the LORD’s mountain” so He “may instruct us in His ways” and they never “train for war again.” But how do you get from primitive perpetual warfare to that undying peace? Eight centuries after these bold words were given to the battle-weary Jewish people, the Christian religion grew out of the Jewish faith, believing Isaiah’s prophecies came true with a young Jewish man, Jesus Christ: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). “For every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for fire. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful upon David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever” (Isaiah 9:4-6).

Bullard, Mercer Dictionary of the Bible (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1990), https://market.android.com/details?id=book-goq0VWw9rGIC. 397 “Three Religions: One God,” Global Connections (Arlington, Virginia: Public Broadcasting Service, 2002), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/themes/religion/. 398 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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For Jews, Jesus may have been a prophet but not the Messiah (Hebrew: ʧʩˇʑ ʕʮʔ, Savior).400 For Muslims, Jesus was both, and the forerunner to their greatest prophet and founder, Mohammed (page 158; 241, 274-275).401,402 For Christians, Jesus was and is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity (one God as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) who became man to be fully God and fully man and so reconcile man back to God through His sacrificial death and resurrection by taking upon Himself all of man’s sins or disobedience against God and His divine and natural laws (page 11-17).403,404 For Christians, God took the initiative to begin revealing his divine law to man through Abraham and the Jewish people. And from them, He fully revealed himself to the human family through Jesus Christ. His perfect obedience to God redeemed man’s freedom by perfectly ordering it to its final object, truth as He declared: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen Him” (John 14: 6-7).405 The sun Socrates only dreamed about came down to dwell with man permanently, illuminating seekers of the good and those still choosing the cave. And so let us attempt a synthesis of political economy, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and philosophy through the “Queen of the Sciences”. Where behaviorally modern man to survive had up to the 1st 399

Ibid. KAUFMANN, Jacobs et al., “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, New York: Funk and Wagnalis, 1906), http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8616-jesus-of-nazareth. 401 John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 1 edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004). 402 FASCHING, Darrell J., DECHANT, Dell, LANTIGUA, David M., Comparative religious ethics: A narrative approach to global ethics, 2 edition (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). 403 JACKSON, Gregory, BOECKLER, Norma, Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant: A doctrinal comparison of three Christian confessions, Kindle (Springdale, Arkansas: Martin Chemnitz Press, 2016). 404 “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” 405 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 400

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century A.D. been promiscuous, violent, and deceitful, this Jesus who claimed to be somehow God including of their Jewish patriarch, Abraham, told his followers: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart….Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne...Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’...You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you... (Matthew 5: 27-28, 33-34, 43-44, ).406

What if Jesus was building on what modernity terms evolutionary biology, and the anthropologically affirmed primitive instincts of man? What if this Jesus Christ, the new Adam, restored to man sanctifying grace and the fulfillment of the preternatural and preteradaptive gifts, thus restoring man to God? What if Jesus presents to the human family the most fully evolved expression of thought and language, the highest expression of humanity, love as the highest ideal of justice and human civilization that makes peace possible for He makes it personal through relationship with Him who alone can unite all of humanity as a global family again and forever? If man was made in the “image and likeness of God,” with a likeness disfigured through the disobedient rebellion of Adam and Eve but was restored in the obedient sacrifice of Jesus, does this show the roadmap to Isaiah’s prophecy that this “Prince of Peace” will sustain by His “judgment and justice” this height of humanity, “the mountain of the LORD’s house” where the nations will go that “he may instruct us in his ways” so finally they will never “train for war again”? (with this moral convergence for humanity being distinct from simply religious relativism or syncretism, as analogically the members of a healthcare team converge on a shared understanding of the patient’s diagnosis and thus proper treatment—though the manner of this knowledge is different across members of the team qualitatively [i.e. a pharmacist’s understanding of the required medications being different from the internist applying them] and by degree [i.e. with the internist as the senior physician possessing greater knowledge of the above than the medical student]). And unlike prior societies, Jesus uniquely challenged His listers to expand their definition of inclusivity so that “the nations” rather than just the Jewish nation would be united as one human family in the Lord’s house. This was a giant leap forward from tribalism as evidenced by two episodes from 406

Ibid.

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Christ’s life, his presentation in the temple and his healing of a Gentile (nonJewish) centurion’s servant: Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon…and when the parents brought in the child Jesus [to the temple] to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: ‘Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel’ (Luke 2: 25-32).407

When this Christ-child was grown, he sought to be this light including to a Roman centurion: The centurion said…‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed….When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven,…And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.’ And at that very hour [his] servant was healed (Matthew 8: 8, 10-11, 13).408

Jesus expanded the definition of tribe by expanding the personal and societal definition of identity by fully revealing man to herself/himself. A person was no longer either a member or not a member of God’s chosen people and thus welcomed or not welcomed into eternal bliss if they obeyed Jewish laws. From thereafter, humanity began understanding God opens his family to every person through Jesus who reconciled man back to God by opening a way of love articulated by Him and His Church, with the basic tenants knowable to all peoples through natural law as the right operation of natural reason to do good and avoid evil (and so are accessible through the varying degrees of clarity afforded in every truth-seeking belief system and culture). This biological, anthropological, philosophical, and theological conceptual evolution was already evident in one of the earliest Christian writers, Paul of Tarsus (Greek ȆĮ૨ȜȠȢ, 5-67 A.D.): For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me

407 408

Ibid. Ibid.

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captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin (Romans 7:22-25).409

To this Jewish scholar become Christian apostle to the non-Jews, Paul saw Jesus Christ as bringing peace to humanity by bringing peace personally to each person—by seeing the ‘war’ between primitive inclinations Paul termed ‘sin’ and the truly human inclination to obedience of the Divine Law with its derivative natural law to do good and avoid evil. Plato’s Republic made a similar argument about the societal order mirroring the inner order. He introduced the concept of justice (Greek dikaiosune) into man’s inquiry into the universe, arguing that man’s greatest achievement will be creating a peaceful society founded on individual and societal justice, mastering physical desires (primitive inclinations) by rational dictates (virtues) and thus achieving happiness like Socrates who sacrificed his life for the pursuit of this truth; for Plato, justice is “giving every man his due” (I.i).410 For Aquinas following Paul’s thought, justice meant also giving God His due through religion as true worship of Him (instead of each person worshiping themselves as her/his own god); from true religion in general flowed an ethics of solidarity to give to each her/his due in a just and therefore peaceful state including of diverse comprehensive doctrines and belief systems that described the specifics of this religion and state differently. But Plato’s life suggests the disjunction between his philosophy and politics/reality, based on an inadequate anthropology. Plato tried to train Dionysius II (397-343 B.C.) to be the philosopher-king of Syracuse to create a just society, only to have it overthrown repeatedly amid a continual power struggle of his disciples that included Dionysius, Dion, and Calippus (described in Plato’s autobiographical Seventh Letter).411 The great Philosopher of philosophers, questioned if philosophy and progress toward justice were sentenced to perpetual restriction to the heavens away from man’s grasp. And nearly 400 years later in Plato’s city of Athens, this question faced Dionysius the Areopagite (Greek ǻȚȠȞȪıȚȠȢ ੒ ~1st century A.D.), a judge of the Athenian council, before Paul’s Areopagus (Ancient

409

Ibid. MOYLE, John Baron, The Institutes of Justinian (Farmington, Michigan: Gale, Making of Modern Law, 2013). 411 PLATO, “The seventh letter,” Plato 2009 {353 B.C.}, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html. 410

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Greek: ਡȡİȚȠȢ ȆȐȖȠȢ, ‘Ares Rock’) sermon: Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: ‘You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you…He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth…so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us… God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead…’ some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus… (Acts 17: 22-23, 26-27, 30-31, 34).412

Like Plato, Paul challenged his listeners to ‘seek’ and ‘grope’ for the truth which alone could be the foundation for lasting justice. But unlike the writer of The Republic, Paul made this philosophical invitation more personal via an integration with theology/metaphysics and his own lived experiences. He proposed this challenge not simply as a Platonic thought exercise considering abstract forms of justice, beauty, and the good. He portrayed the Supreme Truth, Good, Beauty, and Justice itself as taken on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ who fully revealed God to man and man to herself/himself, a testimony supported by the physical evidence of his resurrection from the dead. As Aquinas later argued Jesus was either a liar, lunatic, or Lord. He knowingly or unknowingly falsely declared Himself God and thus was followed foolishly by the millions of Christian martyrs since. The only remaining logical option is that He is who He said He is (per Aquinas’ argument). 400 years after Plato, man now longer had to seek Truth up in the heavens—Truth came down from heaven to earth to seek man. And Dionysius the Areopagite was seized by this incarnate, personable Truth. This Greek legal theorist had ultimately been named for the Greek deity, Dionysius, the god of epiphany, the only born from a mortal woman.413 For in the one whom the Jewish Scriptures foretold (“For to know you well is complete justice, and to know your might is the root of immortality” [Wisdom 15:3]),414 Dionysius like Paul encountered this truth 412

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 413 David Sacks, Oswyn Murray, and Lisa R. Brody, eds., Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World (New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2009). 414 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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face to face in the person of Jesus; Dionysius’ personal thirst birthed his philosophical search which culminated in the theological/metaphysical, only to lead him back to that original thirst met in Christ. Or in the poetic words of Eliot, ‘And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time./ Through the unknown, unremembered gate.’ Eliot’s unknown gate, Ulysses’ plus ultra, the Athenian unknown God, and Plato’s Atlantis-Athenian utopia were all earlier conceptions of what this Athenian judge encountered firsthand as the “narrow gate” (Matthew 7:13)415 at the epistemological barrier (formerly dividing man and the divine); through this gate in the person of this Christ, Dionysius found his exit from the Platonic cave into the light as Dionysius believed Jesus’ words were spoken directly to him: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:6, 9). To pass from the darkened unknown into the warm known, from death to life, Dionysius discovered through Paul what Plato and Socrates could not—he had been trained that the good could only be known in a dim, incomplete way through allegory, but Paul proposed that he could stare directly into the sun, and see the Supreme Good directly in/as Jesus. Where the Jewish people had to go to the Jerusalem temple to encounter God’s presence, Dionysius was enraptured encountering God in the temple of Jesus Christ’s own self, the meeting place of God and man, the religiously affiliated and unaffiliated, theology and philosophy, the true and the beautiful in the Supreme Good which humans could embrace body and soul in an encounter of love which only the poets can approach when thought and language fall silent trying to express that moment. Nearly 2,000 years later on September 1, 1859, the former British theology student turned astronomer, Richard Carrington (1826-1875 A.D.), saw the physical sun. He had been carefully studying it indirectly through his home telescope projecting sunspots onto his wall. But suddenly, he noted in wonder: …two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out…My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen attached to the object glass, for the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sunlight, but…I was an unprepared witness to a very different affair…being somewhat flurried by the surprise, I hastily ran to call

415

Ibid.

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Chapter 3 someone to witness the exhibition with me.416

This Carrington Event was later recognized to be Carrington’s discovery of solar flares, magnetic eruptions of energy from the sun’s surface. Within 18 hours of his discovery, Earth was engulfed in the largest recorded geomagnetic storm ever as the brilliant Aurora Borealis and Australis (Northern and Southern lights) globally stunned observers lost in the pulsating rose, purple, and green lights which disrupted world-wide telegraphs, allowing newspapers at midnight to be read as clearly as at noon.417,418 Electrons erupted from the sun’s surface, tore through the solar system, collided with the planet’s atmosphere 80-500 kilometers above the surface, and rushed down the polar regions’ magnetic fields until ramming nitrogen and oxygen atoms together. Jumping up energy states, these atoms erupted with dazzling Aurora lights before drifting back to their usual states, creating the once-in-a-lifetime encounter with man and her/his sun. And Carrington’s first impulse was not to freeze and analyze what he observed. It was to race to share it. On [Paul’s] journey, as he was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He said, ‘Who are you, sir?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’…Ananias went and entered the house [where Paul was]; laying his hands on him, he said, ‘Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the holy Spirit.’…and he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God (Acts 9: 3-5, 17, 20).419

Saul the Jewish scholar become Paul the Christian evangelist at his own encounter with this sun/Son was enveloped in His flashing light as He spoke directly to the new Paul, touched him through Ananias, and supercharged him like Carrington to ‘hastily’ run to share with others the truth he wished them to also experience first-hand—until he touched Dionysius in his own 416

CARRINGTON, Richard, “Description of a singular appearance seen in the sun on September 1, 1859,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 20 (November 1859): 13–15. 417 BELL, Trudy E., PHILLIPS, Tony, “A super solar flare” (NASA, May 6, 2008), https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_ carringtonflare. 418 SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER, “Aurora” (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017), http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/aurora. 419 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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Carrington Event. And this great Greek thinker similarly became a Christian, the founder of the first Christian philosophical school, and the first Athenian Bishop (III.iv).420 Whereas Socrates in Plato’s Republic declared himself incapable of defining goodness (507b-509c),421 Paul proclaimed this ‘unknown God’ as the God revealed by Jesus Christ. Plato’s Socrates details the famous allegory of the cave and the sun (sections 507b509c); “the child of goodness” (Greek ਩țȖȠȞȩȢ IJİ IJȠ૨ ਕȖĮșȠ૨), the sun, provides the light that endows the human eye with the capacity to see reality, as the form of goodness illuminating man’s pursuit of the truth in the intelligible reality. And through the education (Greek ʌĮȚįİȓĮ) of philosophy, Socrates’ twin allegory of the cave details how the philosopher comes to realize that all humans are prisoners in an epistemological cave, believing reality to be the shadowy projections on the cave wall that are actually created by puppets controlled by those in power standing behind the prisoners (sections 514a–520a). Yet the prisoners believe they are satisfied with this primitive life and are content to stay in the only ‘reality’ they know.422 Yet the philosopher hungers for the true reality, for true knowledge of the forms behind material reality instead of the illusionary shadowy forms on the cave wall. And this hunger, this unnamed love, drives the philosopher (Greek ijȚȜȩıȠijȠȢ, “philosophos”, or “lover of wisdom”) to grope in the dark upwards, outwards, until he reaches the light of day and sees reality illuminated by the sun. Paul passionately painted for the Greek descendants of Plato’s audience that the True, the Good, the Beautiful—the sun itself—came down from the heavens as the Son of God, preached a message of repentance from sin and toward love and righteousness, was crucified and killed for this message, and laid in a cave for three days—only to be raised by the “unknown God” who was now known in the person of Jesus (Luke 24: 1-12).423 For Plato, only the philosopher could know reality and thus be king. For Jesus according to Paul, every person could know reality and thus be saved by the Eternal King including from the shadowing reality she/he had animalistically been bound. And this King invites every person into undying communion with Him, as a family He would not leave orphan by remaining 420

EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA, Church History: Historia Ecclesiastica (Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 4 century B.C.). 421 PLATO, The Republic of Plato: Second Edition. 422 FERGUSON, A.S., “Plato’s simile of light: The allegory of the cave (Part II),” Classical Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1922): 15–28. 423 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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with them in the Eucharist, the bread become his flesh as God had taken flesh in His person: And it happened that, while [Jesus] was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?’ So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, ‘The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!’ Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24: 30-35).424

Plato’s philosophers could see dimly the forms and begin to theorize about the good as former cavemen emerging from a dark cave. But for Jesus’ disciples, “their eyes were opened” in the “breaking of the bread” with their ‘hearts burning [within us] while he spoke’ as they came to see reality fully—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—in front of them. It was this fire that engaged not just the mind but also the soul and the heart—the place of encounter and experience between God and man—which leapt from Christ’s touch to Paul to Dionysius, down the line to the Christian philosophers of Augustine and Aquinas who refined Plato and Aristotle to help unpack the words of Jesus, down to Wojtyla and the current day as the Eucharist has been continually celebrated since as the “source and summit” of the Catholic Church (paragraph 1324; article 11),425,426 the real presence of Christ perpetually present since the Last Supper before his crucifixion. And it was during the celebration of the Eucharist during mass that Aquinas reportedly encountered Jesus Christ during composition of his masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae; Dominic of Caserta spied Aquinas before the mass in prayer before a crucifix of Jesus and “heard a clear voice say these words: ‘You have written well of me, Thomas; what do you desire as a reward for your labors?’” (pages 42-3).427 Aquinas muttered dumbfounded to Jesus, ‘Nil nisi te’ (Latin: ‘Nothing except for you’). Subsequently during his mass 424

Ibid. “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” 426 PAUL VI, “Lumen gentium: Dogmatic constitution of the Church” (Roman Catholic Church, November 21, 1964), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. 427 FOSTER OP, Kenelm, The life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Biographical documents (Harlow, UK: Longmans, Green and Co., 1959). 425

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in 1273 A.D., he received the beatific vision seeing directly Jesus Christ in heaven. When questioned why this caveman-become-philosopher-becomeDominican-priest immediately ceased writing his greatest philosophical work, he mumbled everything he had written was “like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me” (page 110). A lover of wisdom had finally captured and been captured by this Supreme Good, by this Love. The Thomistic philosopher, Robert Barron (1959-present), argues that this wisdom of love was first dimly viewed with the emergence of Homo Sapiens, was articulated by the God of Abraham, and culminated in the person of Jesus who personally touched Paul, Dionysius, and Aquinas along with searchers to the current hour (with a message they believed and believe respectively is logically defensible and dynamically appealing, anthropologically and philosophically valid, and personally appealing to every person when it is heard): If [Jesus] is only divine, then he doesn’t touch us; if he is only human, he can’t save us. His splendor consists in the coming together of the two natures, without mixing, mingling, or confusion. Note how this same Jesus then accompanies his disciples back down the mountain and walks with them in the ordinary rhythms of their lives. This is the Christ who wants to reign as Lord of our lives in every detail. If we forget about this dimension, then Jesus becomes a distant memory, nothing more than a figure from the past.428

The Areopagus thus helps explain these philosophical and anthropological appeals in this pursuit of truth, this coming together of Plato and Paul, philosophy and theology, God and man. It was after the Areopagus that John Milton (1608-1674 A.D.) named his treatise, Areopagitica (1644 A.D.) passionately arguing for freedom of speech during the fiercest part of the English Civil War.429 Milton’s landmark work would become one of the most influential philosophical defenses of free speech, appearing in Locke and political economist, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 A.D.),430 in addition to the US Constitution and Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution’s

428

BARRON, Robert “Homily on February 18, 2017” (Word on Fire, February 18, 2017), https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/homily/. 429 MILTON, John, Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicenc’d printing to the Parliament of England (1644 Edition), ed. Richard C. Jebb (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1918). 430 WILLMOORE Kendall, “How to read Milton’s Areopagitica,” The Journal of Politics 22, no. 3 (1960): 439–73.

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First Amendment.431,432,433 Such Western Enlightenment thinkers and institutions since Paul first gave his sermon demonstrated an important break in the above perennial pursuit of truth. Freedom for Paul (clarified philosophically by Dionysius, Augustine, Aquinas and other Christian philosophers as his intellectual descendants), was not a license to define one’s own truths. Even Plato rejected this concept as the allegory of the cave was about allowing the one sun to illuminate objective reality, not man making for herself/himself a subjective reality out of shadowy puppet caricatures. Yet increasingly the entire philosophical project as a pursuit of truth and love of wisdom is increasingly jeopardized by the inevitable conclusions of the Enlightenment attempting to divorce philosophy from theology and other disciplines (thus producing incomplete constructs that satisfy as little as they explain of man and her/his comprehensive reality). Modern man is unable, according to Locke and similar theorists’ views, to universally and rationally know the good and build a peaceful society based on a common view independent of God and a shared and defensible metaphysical account. Modern historical counterfactuals demonstrate that Enlightenment arguments (that man can illuminate herself/himself independent of objective truth or God by making herself/himself her/his own source of illumination of her/his own truth) only accelerate man’s deevolution back to primitive instincts, as evident in Hitler and more contemporary absolutist rulers claiming their right to power supersedes the people’s human rights, for their own self-defined truth is that there is no truth and they can thus do whatever their appetites dictate (while the postEnlightenment modern philosophers rejecting metaphysics are silent on speaking against them consistently and comprehensively—for such rules and thinkers hold the same foundational rejection of an unmoving and uncaused cause or source of objective truth). Governments and researchers can claim the might of their discoveries about AI-GNR authorize their right to deploy these technologies to remake man in their image. And without a 431

SUPREME COURT, “New York Times v. Sullivan: United States Supreme Court (376 U.S. 254),” ed. Richard A. Parker (United States Supreme Court, March 9, 1964), http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/nytvsullivan.html. 432 SUPREME COURT, “Times Film Corporation v. City of Chicago (365 U.S. 43, 67, 82, 84),” ed. Richard A. Parker (United States Supreme Court, January 23, 1961), http://aclu.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003052. 433 SUPREME COURT, “Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (367 U.S. 1, 151),” ed. Richard A. Parker (United States Supreme Court, April 30, 1956), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/367/1.

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higher authority and account such as God and metaphysics, there is no refuting such modern thinkers. Our clubs and swords may have become more advanced but man becomes more primitive as we abandon our evolutionary (anthropological, biological, and ethical) course for the sake of animalistic violent instincts sexually, politically, and philosophically to reject objective truth (which much flow from an objective good which gives it its normative nature) for the same of our own versions of it. Thus there is a reason why the Socratic and Platonic utopian society has never existed. Even after the UDHR and numerous international bodies advocating human rights, there is still the Syrian refugee crisis, ISIL, and on and on. If no human society has ever given every man his due, what if Jesus Christ went one step further, one truly great leap forward, and united justice and mercy through His invitation to a civilization of love—to make justice and peace attainable by making possible a common human family, united under God the Father and bound by a common identity and moral language to reason toward and experience this shared convergence in understanding and desiring toward this Supreme Good? Is this not an imperialistically defined conception of God but rather a robust universal view by virtue of each person’s belief system converging on common elements, gently and steadily developed by the Catholic Church unpacking Christ’s anthropological, philosophical, and theological teachings for two millennia? In the words of the German theologian, Joseph Ratzinger (1927present), “How many ways are there to God? As many as there are people” (page 32).434 As Wojtyla described love, “[t]he great moral force of true love lies precisely in this desire for the happiness, for the true good, of another Person” (page 138).435 Ratzinger and Wojtyla affirmed the possibility of moral convergence on an objective conception of the good (known in varying degrees and from different perspectives from diverse belief systems held by sincere individuals searching for the truth of this good). Rather than seeing an identity amalgamation of the pluralistic human family nor each member having equal degrees of knowledge and experience of the objective good, they saw each person moving in her/his own unique path in the common direction up this metaphysical mountain toward the good.

434

SEEWALD, Peter, RATZINGER, Cardinal Joseph, Salt of the earth: The Church at the end of the millennium: An interview with Peter Seewald, trans. Adrian Walker, Reprint edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1997). 435 WOJTYLA, Karol, Love and Responsibility. Revised edition. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993 {1961}.

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So what if this metaphysical grounding of love as the objective affirmation of the good of another person, made with unique human dignity in the image and likeness of God (or as Aquinas described philosophically as ‘that which nothing greater can be thought,’ aside from the culturally dense term ‘God’ which may repulse or allure a person) and supported by sanctifying grace from Jesus’ Church offered freely and non-imperialistically to people of all belief systems as He speaks from within their belief systems, makes justice possible and thus peace? What if each person would will the good of the other, and thus states for states? (as God as each person’s first and final cause loves her/him as such and wills her/his ultimate good by inviting her/him into an eternal share in Him, His joy, and His goodness). A brilliant conductor cannot keep her music to herself; out of the fullness of joy internally, she is compelled to share passionately the music with the full orchestra joining and drawing each person into the shared language of a unified harmony. Therefore what if the key bridge between protectionism and free trade, war and peace, tribalism and connectedness, primitive and human acts, surviving and flourishing, is a shift in our belief system? (a progressive convergence to the heights of human thought, a language of natural law orientated toward eventual love that makes peace finally possible by perfecting man’s nature to finally achieve peace through justice fulfilled and powered by love’s redemptive effect on the human person). Does this natural development of our abstract thinking capacities (this new language of human rights and duties rooted in a common human dignity binding us together as a common global family through a robust philosophical tradition) provide a rigorous and substantive philosophical map illuminating the way forward (rather than political slight of hand) into this bold future of the person? An integrated and inter-disciplinary analysis from anthropology, evolutionary biology, politics economics, philosophy, and theology in the Thomistic personalist tradition suggests the answers are ‘yes.’ But let us examine philosophically more closely if the dominant social contract can assist us in this pursuit of reliable answers.

3.2. Challenges to Rawlsian political liberalism 3.2.1. Anthropologic challenges to Rawlsian political liberalism The preceding section has detailed anthropological considerations from the global demographic, evolutionary biologic, and political economic perspectives as viewed with the complementary insights from theology/metaphysics. Therefore this section will concisely outline the challenges they may pose

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to Rawlsian political liberalism. Note, as with the following section, this is not meant to be a definitive refutation of liberalism, which would be outside the scope of this work. This section is solely meant to outline how a Wojtylan Thomistic personalist refinement of the UN human rights-duties may have superior defensibility as an ethical paradigm for bioethical analysis of AI-GNR versus the current dominant models most notably a classic liberalism-based social contract such as found in Rawls. First, Rawlsian liberalism increasingly lacks the demographic evidence for its long-term adoption. As demonstrated above the decreasing proportion and thus political voice of religiously unaffiliated, particularly in the Western world to whom such liberalism particularly appeals, is being replaced by religiously affiliated demographically led by Christians and Muslims. And so the Rawlsian denial of a metaphysical system (challenging the inclusion of those who accept one) is not supported by Christianity and even less so by Islam. Second, evolutionary biology evidence increasingly supports how primitive tendencies (with the subsequent human unethical violent equivalents) produce widespread loss of life and human rights protections when a robust conception(s) of the good accessible by a common moral language is diminished or abandoned in a society. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527 A.D.), the father of modern political science,436 arguably advocated “might makes right”437 for the preservation of power at any cost with any action operationalizing man’s violent instincts makes such actions mandatory in his view.438 The famed Chinese military general and strategist, Sun Tzu (544-496 B.C.), authored The Art of War as one of the most revered military texts in history based on a similar understanding about primitive human instincts.439 Even modern political economic moves by China to become a global superpower have translated such Tzu’s Daoismcentered strategies (page 7) capitalizing on the enemy's’ pride and other weaknesses to quiet amass what is believed to be eventually decisive strengths. For Tzu, “all warfare is based on deception” (Chinese: 腹螿ఄ糹 纊蒺஝篿縑蝢萟襺膻縑ఄ虑蝢萟襺膻虑ఄ紭蝢萟襺蚫ఄ蚫蝢萟襺紭, 436

LAHTINEN, Mikko, Politics and philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli and Louis Althusser’s aleatory materialism, trans. Gareth Griffiths and Kristina Köhli (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2011). 437 MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò, The Prince (1532 Published), trans. N. H. Thompson, Reprint edition (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992). 438 THOMPSON, C. Bradley, “John Adams’s Machiavellian moment,” The Review of Politics 57, no. 03 (1995): 389. 439 MACNEILLY, Mark R., Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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full version, Chapter 1 verse 18). If there is no higher authority to Rawlsian liberalism than the philosophical thought experiment construct of the original position, then rulers who ascribe to this theory will (and have) manipulate(d) it to justify their ends. Historical evidence is abounding for this, including the 60+ years of political economic volatility in the Middle East as Western superpowers under the auspices of world peace detailed in the UDHR supported numerous absolutist rulers who disregarded their people’s rights in order for them to remain in power, as their abundant critics allege. Simply taking the concept of world peace from the superficial level of the UDHR without application of the deeper philosophical foundations (i.e. natural law) was used to justify such means for the ends (separate from the ultimate end of each person and humanity as Aristotle and Aquinas argued). Third, political economic considerations provide abundant demonstrations of the philosophically superficial and pragmatically ineffective Rawlsian liberalism. Healthcare is the world’s third largest economic sector. Like the energy sector did for over six decades following WWII, healthcare is increasingly influencing global political conflict now. The tenuous relationship of America, Russia, and Iran is seen clearly in the current example of Syria in which protection of Russian-Iranian energy interests have accelerated the Syrian refugee crisis (worsened by America’s exit from the Middle East under Obama as US oil and natural gas production grew). And like the second largest sector of automobiles, disruptive technologies such as AI and genetic engineering are increasingly affecting inter-state tension by decentralizing the power of technological advances. Political economic forces have continually pitted states against each other, increasing the number of involved states or the degree of tension, with new technologies. And these forces (not moral ones) are the reference which states resort for justifying state actions to remain more competitive than the other state (as with the US ignoring China’s 1990s human rights violations at the push of American corporate leaders). Additionally, social contracts such as with the WTO are inadequate to slow major economic states from reverting back to protectionist policies at the expense of the peaceconducive effects of free trade in the wake of the 2008 global recession. When instinctual fear hits, nearly every one of these states from these nations pulled back from such contracts as they had no compelling moral authority for them. Military power can temporarily throughout history control a people. But only moral advances as with Aquinas’s metaphysical grounding for the person with her/his resultant rights developed by later Enlightenment thinkers gradually moved states to more sustained efforts for internal and external peace. Anthropologically, humanity needs a moral

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code more compatible with human nature than social contracts which change with the reigning regime.

3.2.2. Perspective-based philosophical challenges to Rawlsian liberalism Rawls’s application of analytic philosophy in A Theory of Justice led to it being lauded as the “most formidable” defense of the social contract theory, propelling him to the ranks of John Stuart Mill and even Immanuel Kant, despite the “looseness in his understanding of some fundamental political concepts.”440 But his approach has been widely criticized from libertarian, natural rights, Marxism, and relational perspectives among others. (Logical and metaphysical critiques will be included in the following section). Libertarian philosopher, Robert Nozick (1938-2002 A.D.), countered Rawls’s liberalism with his own libertarianism based on Locke, Kant, and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992 A.D.).441 Nozick argued in his well-known Wilt Chamberlain thought experiment that Rawls’s Difference Principle (that inequalities should only be allowed if it advances the worst-off citizen in that society) and other patterned principles of just distribution are not compatible with freedom.442 American philosopher and classicist, Allan Bloom (1930-1992 A.D.), noted Rawls’s omission of natural rights (with the inevitable result of positing a society’s ultimate end as unity not justice) did so at the expense of transforming social convention into deceptive ploys to maintain unity even if it violated individual rights.443 Robert Paul Wolff (1933-present), the American Marxist political philosopher, asserts Rawls’s theory excuses societal inequalities to preserve societal union, ignoring how such inequalities can be latent in market economies, private property, or capital relationships.444 Susan Okin (1946-2004 A.D.) argued from feminist philosophy that Rawlsian liberalism neglects hierarchical and structural 440

COHEN, Marshall, “The social contract explained and defended,” The New York Times, July 16, 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/16/archives/a-theory-ofjustice-by-john-rawls-607-pp-cambridge-mass-the-belknap.html. 441 SHAEFER, David Lewis, “Robert Nozick and the coast of utopia,” The New York Sun, April 30, 2008, http://www.nysun.com/arts/robert-nozick-and-the-coast-ofutopia/75572/. 442 NOZICK, Robert, Anarchy, state, and utopia, Reprint edition (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2013). 443 BLOOM, Allan, Giants and dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1991). 444 WOLFF, Robert Paul, Understanding Rawls: A reconstruction and critique of A Theory of Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

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inequalities from the family unit (page 9),445 as the influential Harvard communitarian philosopher, Michael Sandel (1953-present), levelled a similar critique against Rawls that embedded, unconscious societal ties including within the family makes the veil of ignorance and thus the overriding consensus on justice as fairness impossible (page 4)446 (to the point that Rawls modified his argument to specify it is a political not metaphysical conception of justice).447

3.2.3. Logical fallacy challenges to Rawlsian liberalism Formal logic critiques of Rawls are also notable, first with the non-sequitur logical fallacy relating to multiculturalism’ moral pluralism, secondly with his logical inconsistency of his premises, and finally with his popularity logical fallacy. First, with today’s globalized world of multiple incommensurable belief systems, political liberalism following the Western Enlightenment social contract tradition asserts its legitimacy by refusing to commit to a particular belief system or conception of the good, while still formulating universal principles binding on all people within a state democracy. This refusal contains, like in Rawls, rejection of a metaphysical foundation and suspicion of any belief system particularly religiously affiliated in favor of a secular, relativistic worldview permissive of people creating their own truth and conception of the good. Practically, liberal political philosophers are Platonic prisoners in the cave, preferring its peacefulness (from reliance on shadow cave projections anyone can create for their own viewing pleasure) over the risk of climbing out the cave together. Milton’s contemporary, Hobbes, proposed in Leviathan (one of the first and most influential social contract formulations) that the violent, precivilization state of nature requires the social contract to confer individual rights and their collective duty of obedience to the absolute sovereign who alone can maintain peace from societal collapse.448 And since Hobbes, 445

OKIN, Susan Moller, Justice, gender, and the family (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1989). 446 SANDEL, Michael, Liberalism and the limits of justice (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 447 RAWLS, “Justice as fairness: Political not metaphysical.” 448 LLOYD, Sharon A., SREEDHAR, Susanne, “Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2014), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/hobbes-moral.

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contract theorists down to Rawls and his intellectual decedents produce variations of constructs as shadowy projections (i.e. state of nature, original position, veil of ignorance, etc.) to purportedly logically justify why the social contract is required amid moral pluralism. Yet this move is categorically anti-philosophical as it draws conclusions that prima facie are philosophical, and yet they are derived from methods that are not philosophical. A systematic inquiry into immaterial principles of being, existence, the capacity to even know such principles, proper action, how to begin with premises that advance through logically consistent additional premises to a defensible conclusion—this is philosophy. The handmaiden to the queen of the sciences based on the fundamental conclusion that there is an objective truth that is knowable about the above areas of inquiry—this is philosophy. Categorical rejection by liberal political philosophers of these conclusions without discharging the burden of proof justifying this rejection—this is not philosophy. It is a hesitation of the Platonic prisoners who prefer the cave shadows to the illuminating reality of humanity. It is declining the search for the unknown beyond the realm of the knowable material universe (for the search is not done when one arrives at contradictory or non-satisfying conclusions of the mysterious and seemingly elusive conception of the good). A liberal political philosopher can begin with the factual premise empirically verified that moral pluralism exists with differing conceptions of the good. This can be done by polling the world’s population identifying with different belief systems. Yet such a philosopher cannot commit the non sequitur (“it does not follow”) logical fallacy that peoples from different belief systems cannot converge on a single belief system (containing the individual initial ones) espousing a particular conception just because pluralism exists. This fallacy is invalid for it relies on incorrect formal structure by arguing for a conclusion that does not follow from the premises.449 Such a move is akin to the prevalent, destructive practice of ghost writing in modern medical and biosciences research; this practice refers to the omission of authors from published studies, often from the politically and economically powerful drug companies (i.e. see the earlier discussion of the global political economy of healthcare), to publish research that has the impression of scientific, peer-reviewed findings.450 But such papers in 449

GENSLER, Harry J., The A to Z of logic (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). 450 DEANGELIS, Catherine D., FONTANAROSA, Phil B., “Impugning the integrity of medical science: The adverse effects of industry influence,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 299, no. 15 (April 16, 2008): 1833–

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actuality often conceal artifices meant to promote a company’s drug to the detriment of patients, medical professionals, and the integrity and objectiveness of medicine and the biosciences. The latest estimates is that the prevalence of this practice is over 1 in 5 publications in high impact biomedical journals.451 (Machiavelli and General Tzu’s principles for maintaining power through strategy and deceit seem to still draw quite a modern following as the negative anthropological elements of evolutionary biology and political economy continue to this day, including in healthcare and philosophy). Secondly, Rawls’s argument is logically inconsistent due to self-contradiction. He proposed the premise that no worldview or "comprehensive conception of the good" can be the foundational belief system of the state (page 5).452 Next, he asserted all belief systems should be included in reflexive equilibrium to define the conception of justice and its principles if those systems enable reasonable acceptance from all citizens by recognizing certain assumptions (i.e. particular formulations of freedom, individual equality, reasonable pluralism, etc.). Rawls concluded that his political not metaphysical conception of justice as fairness is a justifiable foundation for a just modern democratic state that honors its duty to protect all individuals’ rights. Yet his system invokes a comprehensive conception of the good (by asserting there is no unifying objective conception). Further, this selfcontradiction would lead to excluding the majority of the global population in such a political system, namely the 9 in 10 individuals globally who identify with a religion. These belief systems each propose a "comprehensive conception of the good,” and to varying degrees provide logical evidence to allow listeners to reason to the truthfulness of their conclusions. For Rawlsians to exclude religiously affiliated citizens for political participation effectively denies protection of their rights (i.e. freedom of speech and religion) for them reportedly being unreasonable. Yet Rawlsians provide no justification why it is reasonable to categorically deny the reasonableness of such religious belief systems. If the only relevant distinction between Rawls’s liberal belief system and religious belief systems is that the latter is willing to examine immaterial (in addition to material sources of evidence for defining their premises and conclusions) then it is a greater departure from reason for Rawlsians to make compared 35. 451

WISLAR, Joseph S., et al., “Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals: A cross sectional survey,” BMJ 343 (October 25, 2011): d6128. 452 RAWLS, Political liberalism.

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to religiously influenced thinkers who entertain the possibility of suprareasonable concepts and premises such as the presence of the a common human nature ultimately traced to a divine creator. Religious individuals examine immaterial (including non-human or divine) evidence as possibly true, but Rawlsians claim it is definitively untrue (for otherwise they may form a “comprehensive conception of the good” that would be logically binding on them to ascribe if they are unable to disprove the truthfulness of those belief systems). Rawls must make a stronger claim to the truth compared to religious citizens by implicitly absolutely denying the truthfulness of religious belief systems. This logical inconsistency thus commits Rawls to an additional instance of non sequitur logical fallacy. Why does Rawls’s conception of the good (namely that there is no universal conception) reasonably deserve priority over competing conceptions of the good from religious belief systems? What logical justification in the premises of this political liberalism convincingly defends why this conception of the good is normative and binding on all citizens of a pluralistic state? These questions are begged from the above logical gaps which point us to the final logical fallacy from the popularity argument. Rawls attempts to formulate his defense of the above by appealing to values supposedly latent in reasonable pluralism (such as individual equality and freedom). Such values are distinctly from the Western social contract tradition despite his implicit acceptance of cultural relativism. He thus asserts the truthfulness of his conception of the good based on the popular political concepts in modern democratic states (which he predominantly envisions as his American state with its explicit influence from Western social contract theorists). It was popular for the Platonic prisoners to prefer the shadow projections as real but this did not make the projections true representations of the known world. A truthful conclusion thus is not true simply because the premises leading up to it are popular.

3.2.4. Metaphysical challenges to Rawlsian liberalism The above logical section is adequate to demonstrate that Rawlsian political liberalism (also including an attempted synthesis with Wojtyla’s Thomism or importing it into Rawls) has questionable capacity to sustain itself under the weight of logical scrutiny. There are two ways to show Building A is inferior to Building B in terms of engineering. I can demonstrate the more complex argument that A is inferior to B based on B’s superior strengths and fewer weaknesses. Or I can simply point to A collapsing in on itself and B still standing. The above section is meant to provide a brief demonstration

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of how Rawlsian political liberalism collapses in on itself for its fatal structural weaknesses through an inadequate metaphysical foundation and logical framework. Now this section is meant to transition us to examining how B may be superior to A (a UN human rights-based social contract refined with its Thomistic personalist foundation compared to solely a Rawlsian liberalism for global bioethics) by looking at one final Rawlsian critique from a metaphysical perspective using Maritain and MacIntyre’s political philosophy as springboards for Wojtylan Thomistic personalism. Building on the preceding chapter dealing with the metaphysical challenges to Rawls, a brief exposition was presented on a Wojtylan personalist modification to his political liberalism. Yet this move notably is questionable at best on both philosophical and political grounds. First, a metaphysical foundation from Wojtylan Thomistic personalism could be used to ground Rawlsian liberalism initially. But the logical conclusions from these metaphysical arguments have epistemological, ontological, and political philosophical conclusions that are incompatible with Rawls’s theory in their current state (as proponents of this theory have been largely unwilling to modify the basic structure of Rawls understandably). This foundation commits Rawls eventually to a particular worldview operating independently from his reflexive equilibrium to derive at a conception of justice with its derivative principles. And politically, a classic Rawlsian could not accept Wojtylan Thomistic personalism, just as a true Wojtylan personalist (or even Thomistic-Aristotelian or any non-liberal political philosopher more generally) could not accept a Rawlsian integration with her/his philosophical framework that compromises the basic metaphysical foundation and resultant structure. The camps are mutually exclusive, for Rawlsians as social contract theorists attempt to construct their framework separate from any normative belief system appealing to a higher authority, and Wojtylan personalists (and non-liberal political philosophers) are prohibitively restricted in their conclusions if they follow Rawls to ignore their metaphysical foundations. Rawlsians say the non-liberal philosophers limit freedom through their universal, normative worldviews. A non-liberal philosopher such as Wojtyla argued that liberal philosophers limit rights particularly free speech (particularly religious) by limiting metaphysics and thus the resultant anthropology and ethics. Wojtyla’s system can make Rawls’s system more defensible (or in other words, articulate and defend Rawlsian concepts from within Wojtyla’s system) while it still retains its overall structure through metaphysical extension by building a bridge to the more robust Thomistic personalism, but Wojtyla’s system collapses if it sacrifices its metaphysical foundation. One of the parties must comprise about the metaphysical foundation. The Thomistic personalist invitation

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historically thus has been left largely unanswered. So if a metaphysical revision of Rawls has no clear path forward, is there a metaphysical critique of Rawls that convincingly demonstrates—even independent of the significant anthropological and other philosophical challenges noted above—that global bioethics requires a different framework than (or at least a revision of) political liberalism? This tradition has provided important insights into modern political philosophy including the success of the UDHR which is a highly effective social contract. Global bioethics owes a significant debt of gratitude to theorists in this tradition including Rawls—but they have no philosophical or political requirement to remain with this framework if it is inferior to an alternative. So before we more completely develop this alternative (the argument as to why UN human rights-based social contract with its Thomistic personalist foundation and refinement [producing a personalist contract] are a potentially superior alternative), let us first focus on a final Rawlsian critique. We will do so by focusing on three differing approaches within the Thomistic-Aristotelian political philosophy spectrum—beginning with Maritain and progressing in the later chapter to MacIntyre and Wojtyla.

3.3. Maritain’s integrated challenge to Rawlsian liberalism These thinkers were selected because of the significant degree of influence they exerted on modern political philosophy and particularly Thomism (Maritain through the UDHR; MacIntyre through his moral and political philosophy recognized as one of the 20th century’s most formidable contributions to these fields with his unique virtue ethics;453 and Wojtyla with his distinctive synthesis of Thomistic-Aristotelianism and modern personalism to produce a profound evolution of philosophy treating man not simply as an object of study but always also as a subject with pluralistic appeal to and from within diverse belief systems). The subsequent section dealing with these philosophers will attempt to illustrate the philosophical progression from Maritain to MacIntyre to Wojtyla. And this ThomisticAristotelian approach from which these theorists emerge was selected as it is one of the most developed philosophical alternatives to political liberalism (and the only major system embedded in the UN), stretching from philosophy’s earliest days through Plato and Aristotle to Augustine and Aquinas to the current day. The arguments from these thinkers will be used 453

LACKEY, Douglas P., “What are the modern classics? The Baruch Poll of great philosophy in the twentieth century,” The Philosophical Forum 30, no. 4 (1999): 329–46.

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to test the conclusion that Rawlsian liberalism fails metaphysically and thus philosophically—and so fail even in its ultimate reported end to protect justice through protecting rights, as it attempts to champion a distorted conception of freedom at the expense of truth and thus rights which are predicated upon a realistic conception of freedom. Maritain’s approach shares many key features of Rawlsian liberalism including recognition of moral pluralism in the modern democratic state, convergence of different belief systems on democratic values for reasons intrinsic to their own systems, and his refusal to dictate individuals accept explicitly his conception of the good. But the Maritain point of departure from Rawls is that his system does not follow Rawls in implicitly stating his conception of the good nor share in the same conception (i.e. a non-religious political liberalist view that the good is subjectively defined). Maritain not only explicitly proposed a Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law conception of the good as a metaphysical and epistemological grounding for justice and the state (page 86 and 95),454 he argued that any conception of justice requires a philosophical defense based on one’s objective conception of the good. Otherwise, a person’s conception would be simply a subjective preference like one’s preferred ice cream flavor. So following Aristotle and Aquinas, Maritain defended his conception of the good through natural law (rather than the positive law of Rawls and social contract theorists). More specifically, he supported Aquinas’ concept of ‘synderesis’ detailing how all persons are bound by the natural law due to their common human nature that is reflected in the natural law, a law that they know connaturally instead of rationally. But Maritain faced similar critique to Rawls at this point; both had to deal with the common problem of disagreements among peoples from different belief systems about what the common conception of justice requires in a particular political situation. Instead of a type of Rawlsian reflexive equilibrium that can perpetually imprison deliberators in indecisive debates without a clear authority to resolve them, Maritain proposed a road out of this intellectual impasse by dealing squarely with the problem. He again broke from what would be Rawls’s system which neglects the inevitable challenges caused by incommensurable conceptions of the good by instead asserting (1) that natural law can be differentially known to individuals and societies according to their moral capacities but it still (2) does not prevent their moral evolution through individual and collective understanding of the moral law. He argued that though primordial humans were often brutally 454

MARITAIN, Man and the State (L’homme et L'etat).

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violent (to the point of massacring whole tribes including women and children to secure their resources), this historical fact does not logically justify the conclusion that modern humans cannot progressively become more moral on average (even if brutally violent modern individual examples are noted). The artistic progression from the cave drawings in 2,000 B.C. to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is not a fluke. This refinement has marched relentlessly forward following the neurocognitive mutations from Homo Erectus to modern Homo Sapiens with the associated increases in the temporal (memory, etc.) and frontal lobes (abstract thought, art, morality, etc.) which facilitated this leap along and the associated moral refinement when such capacities were applied to ethics as not only the right way to represent reality (i.e. art) but also the right way to deal with others (i.e. ethics).455

3.3.1. Maritain’s metaphysics Maritain thus avoided Rawls’s logical fallacies by grounding his political philosophy on the Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics and conception of the good with its natural law structure enabling political debate and resolution. This resolution is possible because of Maritain’s different understanding of truth and freedom’s relationship. Rawls sees freedom and truth potentially at violent odds (i.e. any claim to objective truth by a belief system’s conception defines the limits of ethical action a person can choose). But Maritain saw them as integrally connected. Like Aquinas, he argued humanity’s end or telos is their full perfection or flourishing (spiritually and morally). Maritain emphasized that this perfection is true freedom. The converse is a drug addict is not free to make decisions that deviate from continual support of her/his addiction. A person is thus not free to choose any action that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain, as an Enlightenment utilitarian would recommend as long as it provides net societal benefit (cf. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment). For a person can become an addict after repeated selection of drugs of abuse and then be chained to the addition as its prisoner. Maritain’s treatment of freedom thus demonstrates his contribution to Aquinas’ thought, a uniquely personalist contribution which Wojtyla would continue. A rigorous anthropology was irrelevant to Rawls—humans are simply assumed to be rational creatures whose rationality allows them to peacefully co-exist through certain 455

LIEBERMAN, Daniel E., MCBRATNEY, Brandeis M. KROVITZ, Gail, “The evolution and development of cranial form in Homo Sapiens,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 3 (February 5, 2002): 1134–39.

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political protocols for a communal and artificial conception of justice. So even if his philosophical framework was logically consistent and valid, it would still collapse through an indefensibly superficial conception of who the person is that actually is described by the framework. A theory of justice is not independent of the theorist who conceives it. Therefore, for Maritain, an adequate understanding of man was paramount to his political philosophy. Maritain’s description of humanity built on Aquinas’ treatment of the political nature of man insofar as a human being is an individual of material substance (communicable or that which is common with other individuals), constituting a societal collection of individuals orientated toward the common good. But Maritain went further than Aquinas by emphasizing the implications of a human individual being simultaneously a person. This unique contribution is clearer when he defined each person’s telos of happiness as freedom. Aristotle saw the end as virtuous living for its own sake during earthly life. Aquinas saw it for the sake of conforming to the natural law that produced eventually eternal happiness as union with God. Maritain also saw the purpose of each person as this spiritual and moral perfection, but he articulated it as freedom, the experience of liberation from primitive instincts to attain the full stature and nobility of human nature, namely, to be united with God the Father. As a daughter experiences her growing relationship with her father as he spends more time helping her develop her passion for reading, or dance, or science, she feels more and more free to apply her intellect and will to excelling at these virtuously (i.e. excellently in the classic Aristotelian Greek conception) and sharing her father’s joy and pride as she grows in perfection of those pursuits. We will examine this personalist element more deeply with Wojtyla shortly. This purpose emphasizes that each human being is a person, insofar she/he has a unique, incommunicable intellect and free will derivative from her/his dignity as made in the image and likeness of God. Human beings are bound by the natural law to seek the common good of society, but society is bound by the duty to respect each person’s rights flowing from her/his dignity such that the common good cannot be achieved by sacrificing the good of any person. Thus a Maritain personalist would not allow society to mandate the sacrifice of one person to save all of society, for each person “must be treated as an end” (page 84).456 Maritain thus reaches a similar conclusion for instance as Kant with his categorical imperative prohibiting use of a 456

MARITAIN, Jacques, The Rights of Man and Natural Law (Les Droits de L’homme et La Loi Naturelle), trans. Doris C. Anson (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943).

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person (specifically never solely as a means; cf. page 30),457 but the justification for and application of this conclusion is vastly different given the metaphysical and anthropological divergence of Maritain’s natural law’s philosophical tradition and the Kantian (and larger liberal philosophical) tradition. But unlike a Maritain personalist, Kantians and such liberal thinkers could allow using a person (particularly for Kant as long as the person is at least not solely used as a means). A Maritain personalist would reject using someone in the cases a Kantian or liberal thinker would but with metaphysical and methodological differences that diversify the justification (such as a Kantian categorical imperative recognizing reason prohibits the use of someone for it could not become a universal maxim or a social contract outlawing human rights abuses because the contract prevents it). The larger liberal philosophical project is based on a circular logical fallacy that undermines its conclusions (with its foundational metaphysical and larger philosophical assumptions justified by the highest authority of human reason that itself lacks ultimate justification as the highest authoritative or causal source of such justification). The liberal systems, though often elaborate and admirable in their scope and intellectual rigor, amount to transient sandcastles. A determined boy does not make them more permanent by making them more complex. They are still sand, and so will always collapse—unless new, nondeteriorating building blocks and foundation are used. And so enters Maritain’s anthropology with the philosophical and theological arguments for man made in the image and likeness of God. And from the resulting moral philosophy, oriented toward the fulfillment of each person committed to the common good, flows his personalist political philosophy and ethics as a middle road between individualism and socialism.

3.3.2. Maritain’s ethics and political philosophy From his friendship with personalist Emmanuel Mounier beginning in 1928, Maritain developed this moral and political philosophy by what he termed ‘integral (Christian) humanism,’ in contrast to secular humanism. Maritain deliberately broke from the latter tradition modified during the Enlightenment attempt to deify human reason by decapitating it from man and burning her/his spiritual nature on the pike of rationality, liberated supposedly from the archaic chains of religion. Such secular humanism can be traced back to Swiss political philosopher, Rousseau, and his Émile, ou de L’Education 457

KANT, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: 3rd Edition.

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(French: Emile, or on Education) (page 6).458 Though the primary influencers on the most recognizable Enlightenment social contract-based modern democracy, that of the US, was Locke and Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755 A.D.), Rousseau was still profoundly influential on the founding fathers as noted earlier with Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and later in the UN UDHR as manifested through its post-WWII US and UK drafters. Yet Maritain emphasized the protection of reason and the just state of liberated individuals could only be made with integral not secular humanism due to the logical fallacies and political demise the later produces. This was seen as Rousseau’s Emile was adapted to fit the political needs of the Enlightenment, ultimately driving France’s national education system which enshrined his thought after their Revolution.459 Rousseau conceived of this work as “the best and most important of all his writings” (page 529530)460 to detail an educational structure able to preserve the innate goodness of the natural man described in his Social Contract from a corrupt society (page 127).461 Rousseau believed his philosophical task was to detail how the modern man of his day could achieve a peaceful society that would allow religion to inform politics for which youth education was critical. As a precursor to Rawls, Rousseau concluded his Social Contract with the last full chapter dedicated to his conception of civil religion which prepared his educational and thus political thought to be adapted for secular humanism and later social contractarians down through the UN and Rawls.

3.3.3. Social contract humanism This formulation of an artificial humanism (that ultimately disregards the rights of individuals by attacking the metaphysical integrity of the bodysoul unity that is integral to human nature) is the cornerstone of Locke, Rousseau, and the broader Enlightenment thought. And since it holds no metaphysical foundation, it offers no robust defense against why nihilisticcommunism, Nazi-Nietzschean, or other amoral political philosophies 458

ROUSSEAU, Emile, or on education. BLOCH, Jean, Rousseauism and education in eighteenth-century France: Studies on Voltaire & the eighteenth century (Oxford, UK: Voltaire Foundation, 1995). 460 ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The confessions, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1953). 461 BOYD, William, The Educational Theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Brasted, UK, 1963 {1789}). 459

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cannot be chosen from among its subsequent adaptations. But what is this foundation and why is it supposedly deficient philosophically? The answer lies in the logical fallacies and unsound premises that Rousseau’s successors, including Kant and Rawls, would inherit. The profound influence he had on Kant was evident in Kant’s categorical imperative (with its third formulation as the kingdom of ends in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals which draws from Rousseau’s general will in Social Contract), his moral psychology and related secular humanism,462 and ultimately his political philosophy with its concept of international justice.463 (A popular belief in Kantian history is that enraptured reading of Emile was the only reason Kant ever missed his daily walks) (Article 6).464 Rawls as an avid Kantian reader further demonstrated his intellectual loyalty to Rousseau’s tradition in his concepts of justice as fairness, metaphysicsfree social contract, overlapping consensus amid pluralism, and the original position (with self-interested choice being subordinate to determining just principles in A Theory of Justice which further developed Rousseau’s Social Contract argument about individuals pseudo-impartially choosing universal laws that protect their interests). Further evidence for this lineage is Rawls’s Harvard lectures, The Law of Peoples, which deliberately sought to adapt Rousseau for ‘realistic utopianism’465 by more fully developing his ideas. Thus the secular humanism with its related metaphysics-less political philosophy runs from Rousseau, through Kant, and finally to Rawls. What is the internal structure of this secular humanism that lends itself to a particular political adaptation? Despite being a Christian Calvinist,466 Rousseau condemned Christianity as incapable of facilitating the necessary social solidarity and national identity for a stable state. According to him, the ideal republic as a flourishing state would be based rather on civil 462

KANT, Immanuel, Religion within the limits of reason alone (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2008 (1793)). 463 SPECTOR, C., “The plan for perpetual peace: From Saint-Pierre to Rousseau (Le Projet de Paix Perpétuelle: De Saint-Pierre à Rousseau),” in Principes Du Droit de La Guerre, Ecrits Sur Le Projet de Paix Perpétuelle de L’abbé de Saint-Pierre, ed. Bachofen B. Spector C., trans. Patrick Camillier (Paris: Vrin, 2008). 464 BERTRAM, Christopher, “Jean Jacques Rousseau,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/rousseau. 465 SPECTOR, C., “The plan for perpetual peace: From Saint-Pierre to Rousseau (Le Projet de Paix Perpétuelle: De Saint-Pierre à Rousseau).” 466 CRANSTON, Maurice, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, June 12, 2015), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau.

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religion as an early Rawlsian overlapping consensus concept that would be supported by citizens from pluralistic moral and religious belief systems (Chapter 9).467 All peoples would share this deistic-type civil religion which holds that a Supreme Being will punish evil people who violate the law with Hell and reward the good who obey them with Heaven (such a civil religion falls under the larger deism religious philosophy asserting that human reason alone not organized religion demonstrates God as a Supreme Watchmaker who created the universe and lets it run its course without intervention). All citizens of the modern state should thus recognize the social contract and its related positive law as sacred. Like Locke, Rousseau limited sovereign power by mandating it respect religious tolerance and thus be bound by its dictates to not interfere with individuals’ beliefs. Belief systems that assert salvation is only found within their system must be outlawed from the state. Catholics for instance would be tolerated in such a state for believing all salvation comes from God the Father through Jesus Christ, but Christ can reach people in different belief systems from within their systems to do good and avoid evil (paragraphs 846-848),468 with this state similarly permitting Islam and its God (Quran 2:256),469 and Judaism and its Yahweh (Isaiah 2:2-4).470 But for Rousseau, Christian Baptists for instance would be expelled (for asserting non-Christians cannot be saved). And atheists may be executed (for not fearing divine punishment of human law). We will not dwell here on how Rousseau could justify distinguishing his civil religion from the existing religions of his time or why such a religion should be believed theologically or rationally. Yet despite the anti-humanism of this secular humanism and the social contract tradition, it has been widely influential. Its chief political adaptation, the US, has been particularly politically successful according to the French diplomat, Alexis Charles Henri Clérel Viscount de Tocqueville (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859 A.D.) born 27 years after the death of his fellow Frenchman, Rousseau.471 In his Democracy in America following his commission by the French government to study the US prison system, 467

BERTRAM, C., Rousseau and the social contract (London, UK: Routledge, 2004). 468 “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” 469 STAFF, The Noble Quran ({Quran.com}, 2017). 470 “Isaiah: Chapter 2,” in The Torah: Jewish Bible. http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/15933/jewish/Chapter-2.htm. 471 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, 1 edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012 (1835, 1840)).

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de Tocqueville following the social contract tradition argued that a rulebased democratic state would work in the US. Like Rousseau and Jefferson, de Tocqueville believed in a civil religion-inspired political system as he noted, “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith” (Introduction). But when Rawls inherited the social contract and Enlightenment traditions, he removed the faith proposed by de Tocqueville and the reason-produced universal moral laws by Kant (to prevent the Enlightenment reverence for reason devolving into authoritarianism [8:146])472 and radically modified Rousseau’s civil religion. Instead of Rousseau’s test that a belief system integrated into the state be a deistic conception of the good (of a Supreme Being rewarding the good and punishing the evil), Rawls required that no belief system make an absolute claim to the truth. He thus transformed the Enlightenment civil religion into a modern atheist/agnostic civil society. Rawls rejected metaphysics to make his social contract the philosophical absolute sovereign to which all other belief systems must submit themselves. As the most prominent and formidable social contract (and arguably post-Enlightenment) theorist of the 21st century, he demonstrated the inevitable conclusion of the unsound premises he inherited from his tradition—slavery to the absolute sovereign of the ruling regime’s political construct of the social contract benefitting them. The Enlightenment project, attempted to be resurrected by Kant from Rousseau and later by Rawls, becomes what it rebelled against—obedience to an absolute sovereign belief system, but instead of Judeo-Christianity in the pre-modern philosophies after Aristotle (which could philosophically accommodate and dialogue with the religiously unaffiliated), the Enlightenment created the absolute secular state (which excludes the religiously affiliated by reducing pluralism to secular liberalism). By killing metaphysics (even considering the robust but reduced Kantian alternative) and denying objective truth or positing that only human reason can construct it, the systems of Enlightenment thinkers (i.e. Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls) and anti-Enlightenment thinkers (i.e. Nietzsche) and that of the current philosophers in their wake are unable to prevent their arguments from ‘justifying’ exterminating whole peoples by those lusting for power as the inevitable conclusion of unsound premises. Is a leader justly made such if they corruptly abuse (but still obey) the democratically defined process? A modern philosophy may have rules and a structure, but that does not mean automatically that one cannot bend those 472

KANT, Immanuel, Critique of pure reason: The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (1781, 1787)).

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rules and constructs to justify the conclusion they want. The Enlightenment and its resultant political embodiment of totalitarianism thus have been blamed for the near apocalyptic world wars and earlier bloody French Revolutions.473,474,475 Rawls responded by attempting to revive the Enlightenment’s social contract tradition (by ignoring the deeper metaphysical challenges that repeatedly were exploited for totalitarian regimes’ purposes, and instead developed semantically and through thought constructs popular democratic values currently in Western societies in particular). But long before him, Counter-Enlightenment thinkers proposed alternatives, ranging from Romantic philosophers including François-René Viscount of Chateaubriand (1768-1848 A.D.) to conservative politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797 A.D.) credited with founding modern conservatism and the British Empire’s purported moral foundation.476 In line with Burke, the famed German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900 A.D.), in his later writings fervently attacked the Enlightenment and its French roots including through the French Revolution.

3.3.4. Nietzsche humanism responding to utilitarianism and the social contract Nietzsche interestingly rejected attempts to rework Enlightenment philosophy (later taken up by Rawls) through a more radical approach by rejecting all of philosophy. Rawls quietly excluded metaphysics from his social contract and so made his secular humanist conception of the good the absolute ruler of other belief systems under the guise of philosophical arguments. But Nietzsche loudly denied metaphysics (and philosophy) and so made man his own sovereign ruler free of even reason by singlemindedly pursuing power (and politics). Maritain held that both the Enlightenment and Nietzsche-style of anti-Enlightenment (or any approach rejecting integral humanism) inevitably devolves into anti-humanism since man’s united nature of body and soul cannot be harmed without harming 473

HORKHEIMER, Max, ADORNO, Theodor W., Dialectic of Enlightenment: Cultural memory in the present, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 1 edition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007 (1944, 1947)). 474 BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007 (1790)). 475 BARRUEL, Abbe, Memoirs illustrating the history of Jacobinism: A translation from the French of the Abbe Barruel (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010 (1798)). 476 BRENDON, Piers, The decline and fall of the British Empire: 1781–1998 (London, UK: Jonathan Cape, 2007).

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both his body and soul. Denying man’s immaterial aspirations for the true, the good, and the beautiful does not liberate him; it keeps him chained to Plato’s cave and the insatiable thirst for animalistic pleasures and selfpreservation. Nietzsche begged to differ. Like the Enlightenment deists opposed to revealed religions with absolute and particular claims to truth, Nietzsche agreed but went further to kill even man’s spiritual nature, eventually resulting in WWII’s massacre of millions along with the casualty of causality per Nietzsche: God is dead [Gott ist tot]…And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?...Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (section 125).477

Maritain does not deny Nietzsche’s claim; man did kill God, Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected to absolve man’s doubt, disobedience, and denial of her/his divine calling to eternal beatitude with a loving God. But for Maritain, God was real, imminent, and provable. For Nietzsche, he was a tragic joke of a deception not even worth disproving but simply denying. As Martin Heidegger (1889-1976 A.D.) argued, Nietzsche was convinced that the death of God was a sensational semantic description of the death of metaphysics and philosophy as a whole.478 Nietzsche feverishly worked to discover meaning amid the resultant existential nihilism that he believed would swallow the world once modern man ‘recognized’ there is no God, metaphysics, and objective truth and thus no more of Christianity’s “slave morality” (page 127),479 universal moral values, or intrinsic meaning in life. Yet humanity’s terror and despair losing its former sense of identity and purpose would be true freedom per Nietzsche—finally man could emerge unfettered from the enslaving superstitions of her/his fathers, and finally, become more than a mortal man. He could become the Übermensch: Behold, I teach you the overman!...Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let

477 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Gay Science ( Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft), trans. Walter Kaufmann, 1 edition (New York, NY: Random House, 1991 (1882)). 478 MULLER-LAUTER, Wolfgang, Heidegger und Nietzsche: Nietzscheinterpretationen II (Berlin, Germany: Walter De Gruyter, 2000). 479 NIETZSCHE, Beyond good and evil.

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For Nietzsche, the overman is the height of evolution: ape to man to overman who is at last able to eclipse his fear of moral guilt and eternal death through her/his “supreme will to power” (section 617).481 But curiously, this superman with her/his heights of human rationality does not give reasons why God is dead nor how his intellect has overcome him. Nietzsche made bold pronouncements—but not philosophy. He roared with elegant prose—but with a madman’s mysteries rather than philosopher’s proofs. Yet his thoughts gave voice to the moaning of the spiritually dry early 20th century man, coming to grips with rapid technological and societal developments. Three years following Nietzsche’s death, Nobel laureate self-identified atheist playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950 A.D.) wrote Man and Superman adapting Nietzsche (pages 18-21)482 to depict his philosophy (page 221).483 But the philosophical conclusions and the political implications of this Nietzschean pseudo-philosophy giving voice to modernity began worrying others, including the British Catholic poet and philosopher, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936 A.D.), pegged by Shaw as “a man of colossal genius.”484 Amid this famously amicable Shaw-Chesterton friendship, Chesterton directly sounded his concerns two years after the play: Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food 480

NIETZSCHE, Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for all and none (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein buch für alle und keinen). 481 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The will to power (Der wille zur macht), trans. Walter Kaufmann, 1st edition (New York, NY: Vintage, 1968 (1901)). 482 SINGH, Devendra Kumar, The idea of the superman in the plays of G.B. Shaw (New Delhi, India: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1994). 483 VOGT, Sally Peters, “Ann and superman: Type and archetype,” in Modern Critical Views: George Bernard Shaw Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987). 484 WARD, Maisie, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, ed. Aeterna Press, Kindle (London, UK: Aeterna Press, 2014).

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and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby (chapter 4).485

A profound philosophy was not being discovered in the Enlightenment. Rather a reduction of the sound pre-modern philosophy along with its defensible anthropological account of the person was discarded in the revolutionary fires of this movement. Chesterton realized that this blind, Nietzschean grasp for power did not advance man from ape but violently reversed the evolutionary clock. It did not liberate man, it returned him to his cave before Socrates braved the torch of philosophy. As Maritain would later use his Thomistic natural law to critique this secular humanism as antihuman, Chesterton earlier proposed his ‘uncommon sense’ as a natural law appeal to universal morality (uncommon to his contemporary philosophers not for its untruthfulness but for its unpopularity): The worship of will is the negation of will … If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, ‘Will something,’ that is tantamount to saying, ‘I do not mind what you will,’ and that is tantamount to saying, ‘I have no will in the matter.’ You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular (chapter 20).486

Chesterton argued that this anti-humanism seeking to negate man’s spiritual nature not only made him less human, it also damaged his societal relationship with society. Tearing the integrity of the individual asunder does not simply damage the person. It scars the entire society of those individuals. And it turned out to ultimately fuel a world war. The German philosopher, Alfred Bäumler (1887-1968 A.D.), seized upon the Nietzschean “supreme will to power” and the overman freed from universal morality among his other concepts to articulate the driving ideals of the emerging Nazi politics of the 1930s (page 185):487 “The German state of the future…will be created out of the spirit of Nietzsche and the spirit of the Great War [WWI] (page 180-183).488 This Nazi application of Nietzsche was furthered by his antiSemitic sister and Nazi sympathizer, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (1846-

485

CHESTERON, G.K., Heretics (Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2011 (1905)). Ibid. 487 BAEUMLER, Marianne, Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler (Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989). 488 BAEUMLER, Alfred, Nietzsche der philosoph und politiker (Leipzig, Germany: Philipp Reclam jun., 1931). 486

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1935 A.D.),489 who edited her brother’s unpublished works (page 596, 454)490 along with her broader adaptation of his ideas for the Nazi party— to the point that its government financially supported her work in the Nietzsche Archive until her death and even her funeral for which Hitler was present.491,492,493 The deliberate removal of metaphysics and thus ethics in Nietzsche’s system enabled its Nazi weaponization scientifically and politically. The Nazi party applied the Nietzschean evolution of the overman to its embrace of Social Darwinism (arguing for the survival of the fittest among human beings)494 to create the superior Aryan race (page 156)495 with racial purity (Volksgemeinschaft). And 33 years after Nietzsche’s death, Hitler birthed his Nazi Germany, free of universal morality and hesitation to seize power, as he quickly moved to exterminate persons he deemed ‘less fit’— over 6 million Jews, the mentally or physically handicapped, and dissidents including Catholic priests and religious among many such minority groups. As Nietzsche declared for the Christians, Jews, and others who propose “otherworldly hopes” that his overmen should “let them go!,” Chesterton warned in 1905 that the inevitable philosophical conclusion from the overman’s Nietzschean philosophy (itself the inevitable conclusion of the Enlightenment philosophy) is that it will “throw the baby out,” any future for humanity by leaving politics not philosophy to rule humanity, might not right. And so Hitler took this modern nihilistic philosophy to the genocidal conclusions that followed its premises (page 258)496 flowing from 489

MONTINARI, Mazzino, “La volonté de puissance” n’existe pas (Paris, France: Editions de l’Eclat, 1998). 490 HEIDEGGER, Martin, Nietzsche, Vol. 1: The Will to Power as art, & Vol. 2: The eternal recurrance of the same, trans. David Farrrell Krell, Reprint edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 1991 [1946]). 491 MONTINARI, “La volonté de puissance” n’existe pas. 492 DIETHE, Nietzsche’s sister and The Will to Power: A biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. 493 WROE, David, “‘Criminal’ manipulation of Nietzsche by sister to make him look anti-Semitic,” The Daily Telegraph, January 19, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7018535/Criminalmanipulation-of-Nietzsche-by-sister-to-make-him-look-anti-Semitic.html. 494 WILLIAMS, Raymond, “Social Darwinism,” in Herbert Spencer: Critical assessment, ed. John Offer (London, UK: Routledge, 2000). 495 BAUM, Bruce David, The rise and fall of the caucasian race: A political history of racial identity (New York, NY: New York University Pres, 2006). 496 KERSHAW, Ian, Hitler: 1889-1936 hubris, Reprint edition (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000).

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Nietzsche’s dangerous theses: “the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated” (Volume I, Chapter XII).497 In modern man searching for her/his soul, she/he repeated ancient man’s first crime. According to the Jewish,498 Christian, and Muslim scriptures,499 Cain (Hebrew: ʬ ʓʡ ʓʤ) as the firstborn of the first persons, Adam and Eve, murdered his brother, Abel (Hebrew: ʯʑʩ ʔʷ). But the modern Nietzschean man went further—he murdered not only her/his brother in the Holocaust, she/he killed God and so man’s human nature, becoming not a super-man but a savage ape. So amid the horrific aftermath of the war that had threatened to destroy all of humanity with the Nazi attempt to destroy the human soul, the UN half a century after Nietzsche’s death rejected his nihilistic philosophy and Hitler’s Nietzschean politics. These united nations did not shy from passionately affirming amid their moral pluralism their objective conclusion about the existence of universal human nature and resultant dignity, rights, and duties. And central this conviction was the French natural law and Thomistic personalist philosopher, Maritain, who had been shaken by his own struggle with the 17th century Enlightenment project reduced to 20th century nihilism. One year following Nietzsche’s death, Maritain and his classmate, a Russian Jewish immigrant named Raïssa Oumançoff (18831960 A.D.), had grown disillusioned with the spiritual death of their contemporary atheist scientism that had attempted to fill the nihilistic void (by positing empirical sciences as the sole authoritative worldview).500 They longed for answers and meaning deeper and more real than what science alone could provide or tried to explain away as superstition or primitive evolutionary instincts. So in a quiet part of Paris’ Jardin des Plantes, Maritain and Oumançoff gave themselves one year to find this meaning, or they would together end their search with suicide and join Nietzsche in the grave. During the tense ensuing year as months began crawling closer to their deadly deadline, the couple encountered the Nobel laureate and French 497

HITLER, Adolf, Mein kampf (New York, NY: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1940). BYRON, John, Cain and Abel in text and tradition: Jewish and Christian interpretations of the first sibling rivalry (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2011). 499 DUKES, Kais, “Abel: Ontology of Quranic concepts from Quranic Arabic corpus” (University of Leeds, 2011), http://corpus.quran.com/concept.jsp?id=abel. 500 SORELL, Thomas, Scientism: Philosophy and the infatuation with science (London, UK: Routledge, 1994). 498

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Jewish philosopher, Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941 A.D.) and the writings of the Catholic St. Therese of Avila (1515-1582 A.D.) (page 69).501 And in 1902, this mutual search and discovery of unfolding objective truth brought them to a simple experience and understanding, or in Oumançoff’s words: The feeling flowed through me that always-for my happiness and my Salvation…that always my life would be bound up with Jacques. It was one of those tender and peaceful feelings, which are like a gift flowing from a region higher than ourselves, illuminating the future and deepening the present. From that moment our understanding was perfect and unchangeable (page 85).502

Maritain and Oumançoff after one year chose not to kill themselves, in two years were married, and in five were baptized into the Catholic Church. They spent the rest of their lives in love continuing the search they began together in 1901 for the Supreme Good that is true and beautiful and real. Jacques would go on to publish 60 Thomistic books and lecture widely throughout the Americas and Europe, alongside Raïssa who gently challenged and carefully refined Jacques’s new thoughts as she edited each work before it went public. Their shared lives, their shared search for truth “bound up” is the key to understanding Maritain’s philosophy. It is not principally an academic enterprise. It is a Platonic pair helping one another scale up and out the cave to the sun-lit day. It is the modern equivalent of the early Christian couple on the road to Emmaus whose “eyes were opened” by the source of the true, the good, and the beautiful they sought— the God made flesh—who illuminated them together in the sharing of his Eucharistic meal. It was Maritain and Oumançoff’s love story falling together more in love with the good they loved and thus more in love with each other.

3.3.5. Maritain’s response to liberal humanism Where Nietzsche’s nihilistic anti-philosophy sought meaning of the self through dominance of the other, Maritain’s philosophy surrendered to a real truth he believed was meaningful because it was relational, perfecting his relationship with this Truth, this God, and thus his wife, society, and self. “I want justice to be done to Raïssa. If there is anything good in my 501 ALLEN, Sr. Prudence, “Mary and the vocation of philosophers,” New Blackfriars

90, no. 1025 (January 2009): 50–72. MARITAIN, Ra’issa, We have been friends together and Adventures in grace (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1961).

502

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philosophical work, and in my books, this has its deep source and light in her contemplative prayer and in the oblation of herself she made to God” (page 8).503 Maritain became a philosopher by falling in love with wisdom, by first falling in love with Raïssa who led him into a personal and lasting love for what he believed was wisdom and Truth incarnate, Jesus. The personal dimension of Maritain’s philosophical search makes clear why he was convicted that a Thomistic personalist natural law effectively served as the basis for a true, defensible political philosophy—even if not every person and belief system accepted this foundation or justification initially— because this foundation had its ultimate foundation in Jesus who uniquely makes clear the telos and path to it for each person and efficaciously calls every person in every age from within her/his unique sociocultural context, lived experience, and belief system. And he believed this Jesus speaks through the belief systems and culture of each person in varying degrees of completeness, as a father increasingly speaks more complex and complete sentences to his child as she/he grows from an infant to toddler and eventually to adult. This lifelong personal and professional search of Truth centered on what would become the driving force behind Maritain’s development of Aquinas—how to make integral humanism intelligible again to modern moral pluralism to inform political discourse. We have already noted his insights interwoven into the UDHR. But his influence is also documented in such modern governments as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of the Fourth French Republic, given his extensive lectures in North America and his long-standing correspondence with WWII French general and later president Charles de Gaulle (18901970 A.D.).504 From a religious standpoint, Maritain’s Christian humanist and personalist thought was used to engage modern (particularly secular) thinkers and other religions. His influence is notable in both his friend, Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the end of the Second Vatican Council (guiding the Catholic Church’s pivot to more extensively engaging the modern world) and Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II who vigorously dialogued with different religions through ecumenism and secular thinkers through common ground dialogue with the UN and other international government and non-

503

MARITAIN, Jacques, Raissa’s journal presented by Jacques Maritain (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1974). 504 SWEET, William, “Jacques Maritain,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/maritain.

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government organizations. But despite all this, 15 minutes spent in the democratic conventions of any modern state makes clear that a theologically informed political philosophy is not effective at resolving political debates amid pluralistic belief systems (though it typically is effective at making the person invoking such a philosophy quickly ignored or shunned by the audience). Though we have shown above that Thomistic-Aristotelianism being unpopular in modern democratic deliberations does not make it untrue. But it does underscore the need for a deeper understanding of what elements in Maritain’s system of thought is unintelligible to modern democracies with their strong liberal bent, how those elements are logically justified, and if they are then how to translate them for today’s modern man. So if Maritain can contribute a robust political philosophy that can be ‘renovated’ for contemporary societies, we must determine what foundation gives it its distinctive elements that gets right what Rawls and Nietzsche got wrong. By attempting to keep the peace amid pluralism, Rawls rejected any belief system with absolute claims to truth fearing they will lead to absolute regimes—instead, his system has been ineffective at guiding modern states how to deal with rising nationalism, inter-state distrust, and intra-state pluralism increasingly unable to resolve fierce societal clashes (i.e. terminations of pregnancy, euthanasia, genetic engineering, etc.). And by attempting to ‘kill God’ by killing philosophy with its foundational sub-discipline of metaphysics, Nietzsche’s nihilistic anti-philosophy was ruthlessly and efficiently applied politically as Nazism (and can still be done so for any political regime that seeks a superficial philosophy to justify its denial of human rights in its unswerving attempt at power). Rawls and Nietzsche’s philosophies both have been historically demonstrated to be weaponized for totalitarian states claiming absolute power over their citizens and their belief systems, begging Chesterton’s question about why get rid of the baby (i.e. the person integrally understood) instead of the bitter food (i.e. the inadequate philosophies)? So if human nature can be objectively and compellingly demonstrated (i.e. in the Thomistic conception) and continually evolving to perfected persons and societies from the particular matter of former apes prone to primitive violence but with the form of rational souls drawing them internally to virtue and fulfillment, how can we throw out the bad philosophy instead in this shared progression? A physician can get rid of a disease in two ways—either kill the disease through the right treatment or kill the patient (i.e. fetal

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surgery versus terminating the child following an adverse prenatal diagnosis requiring an intervention to heal the patient of the disease). Rawls and Nietzsche both show us that their systems lend themselves to killing the patient should the strong (the majority or the overman) dictate. And their resultant totalitarian regimes (even if democratic) show us they prefer eliminating dissidents rather than evolving as a regime. So how could Maritain’s political philosophy provide a defensible and just societal order globally? To understand this ‘how’ we must first look at the ‘why’ latent within his metaphysical starting point. Maritain was not content to accept Nietzsche’s assumed disbelief about God, objective truth, and the intrinsic meaning of life. As he stood on the brink of suicide in 1901 staring down this nihilistic philosophy of blind power, he needed reasons, evidence, and confirmation that there was even a truth out there, and one that he could begin to approach. He needed to know there was a sun outside his darkened cave. And he and his eventual wife found this in their mutual search that led them to Aquinas. So as Nietzsche began his downward spiral into nihilistic philosophy by rejecting metaphysics, Maritain began his ascent by first embracing Aquinas’ revised Aristotelian metaphysics. Aquinas integrated Aristotle’s refinement of Plato to develop his own robust system to speak to the humanity of his time. Maritain likewise sought not to reiterate but “to renovate” Aquinas’ philosophy to speak more effectively to the humanity of his era and the modern man’s preference for modern science and shallow nihilistic philosophies (page 12-13).505 And for Maritain to provide modern man an intelligible philosophy, he had to begin with an intelligible metaphysics. He held that other modern philosophers including the French Enlightenment philosophers before him could not do this because they rejected the starting point of philosophy, the foundation that makes arguments about any objective thing including the truth of humans and their society at all possible: for “a philosopher is not a philosopher unless he is a metaphysician” (page 29).506 Accordingly Maritain largely went on to accept much of Aquinas’ metaphysics. He agreed that this sub-discipline of philosophy studies being as being (Latin: ens inquantum ens), or “the first principles of things and

505 MARITAIN, Jacques, Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative (‘A preface to metaphysics: Seven lectures on being') (New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1939). 506 Ibid.

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their highest causes” (page 27).507 Maritain further agreed with Aquinas’ distinction between essence and existence to explain the problem of plurality and unity, as a being has an individual identity but also has commonalities with similar beings that make this one being a member of a larger class or genus. This distinction when applied to human beings describes how a human being not only has a distinct identity as a person determined by his unique matter but also a societal identity as an individual with the form of a rational soul that indicates a common human nature or essence and thus membership in this class of existing beings. Fast forward to Wojtyla and he will describe this integral humanity as a composite unity of body and soul and thus communicable and non-communicable natures. Rewind to before Aquinas, and you will see Aristotle building on Plato’s distinction between form and matter. Maritain’s point of departure from Aquinas is here, or more accurately his evolutionary share in the continuum of Thomistic-Aristotelianism. To distinguish among the different epistemological boundaries of the empirical scientist, philosopher, and theologian, Maritain distinguished between being as being and sensible being based on the two routes to understand being. The formal object of metaphysics and more broadly the intellect and thus all human investigation is being (page 25).508 But being can also be ascertained as “the object first attained by the human intellect.” This intuition of being makes all further philosophical study possible for it serves as an “intellectual intuition” (rather than a “vague being of common sense” [page 78]) into the very “act of existing” (page 28). This existential subtlety not only distinguishes Maritain from Aquinas (by reflecting his Bergson influence509) but also from such Enlightenment thinkers as Kant (page 48510) or Descartes. Maritain further describes this intellectual intuition as being an experience that is “direct and immediate,…superior to any discursive reasoning or demonstration [….of] a reality which it touches and which takes hold of it” (pages 50-51). Man is aware of the reality of his own being and that it is his uniquely. This intuition can be clarified by the intellectual exercise of “ideating visualization” (page 507

Ibid. Ibid. 509 MARITAIN, Jacques, De Bergson à Thomas d’Aquin, Essais de métaphysique et de morale (New York, NY: Hartmann, 1947). 510 MARITAIN, Jacques, Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative (‘A preface to metaphysics: Seven lectures on being') (New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1939). 508

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58). This sight allows the philosopher to consider what is behind a real thing, which is subsequently “stripped of its real existence outside the mind” (page 58). This vision discovers “the conditions of … an existence of intelligibility in act” (page 58), not the actual conditions of the things’ “contingence and Singularity” (page 108).511 This vision thus shares similarities with Plato’s allegory of the sun (as he seeks to grasp the form behind the matter) and with Aquinas (in seeking the essence once the existence is grasped). Examining the other side of the coin of being (“the act of existing” having above analyzed “being as being”) highlights the next unique Maritain development of Aquinas’s system. Maritain details his conception of “existential intellectualism” (page 70).512 Christian existentialism as a latent, critical concept within Aquinas was so critical to Maritain that he argued what “distinguishes authentic Thomism…is precisely the primacy which [it] accords to existence and the intuition of existential being” (page 12). Here Maritain broke from his contemporary existential philosophers including the first such philosopher, the Dutch Kierkegaard, and the later French Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980 A.D.). Maritain rejected any modern existential premises asserting essence predated existence or denying the intelligibility of essences or even essences themselves. He instead “affirm[s] the primacy of existence, but as implying and preserving essences or natures, and as manifesting the supreme victory of the intellect and intelligibility” to the point that he defined “authentic existentialism” as such (page 13). Maritain explored not only how man can come to know the object of the natural law and what it requires as ethical and political behavior; this external truth can be known internally as man’s desire can be guided by her/his intellect to order her/his freedom toward choosing this truth as it is fulfilling to her/him. He thus adapts a revised Kierkegaard position about subjective truth. For Kierkegaard, the subjective self is the individual in so far as she/he can uniquely and internally experience her/his past, present, and future because she/he exists. Once that person comes into existence, she/he increasingly develops her/his subjective self through choosing actions that will define

511

MARITAIN, Jacques, Science et sagesse, Suivi d’éclaircissements sur ses frontières et son objet: Cours et documents de philosophie (‘Science and wisdom’) (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940). 512 MARITAIN, Jacques, L’existence et de L'existant (‘Existence and the Existent’) Lewis Galantière and Gerald B. Phelan, trans., (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1948).

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her/him (page 193-194).513 This subjectivity leads the individual person to thus discover her/his common human nature and the resulting requirements of objective truth as an ethics of love, as Kierkegaard argued Truth became flesh, Jesus with His Christian Church, “discovered the neighbor” (page 44). Drawing from Aristotle’s conception of man as a political animal and Aquinas’ objective-centric approach to it, it will be Wojtyla who developed Kierkegaard and Maritain’s existentialism to define the person/individual and communicable/non-communicable self and the importance of actions as virtues or vices in The Acting Person. This existentialist element in his personalism would eventually be the key for him synthesizing the objective and subjective truths, seeking to make intelligible to modern man the objective requirements of the Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law i.e. for economic and sexual and relationship morality through the person’s subjective experience of their truthfulness in conformity with her/his internal desire for freedom orientated toward her/his happiness, or eternal union and thus fulfillment with God.514 Maritain thus sets the stage for Wojtyla and others to examine how objective and subjective truth and selves are two sides of the same coin in a new philosophical currency that preserves the person as a unique individual to be loved as the only ethical response to the person’s existence (rather than being reduced to a consumeristic product to be used).

3.3.6. Maritain’s epistemology Before deriving his political philosophy, Maritain first described how his metaphysics informed his epistemology. He proposed metaphysics is contained in four major principles including sufficient reason, identity, efficient causality, and finality or telos for which every act is directed (page 90).515 The two-fold proof for them he maintains is indirect rather than direct: logical contradiction is the only way to deny any of the principles, while human experience (drawing from his existential philosophy) affirms them (page 90). Given the above metaphysical premises, Maritain concluded that true philosophy begins with true metaphysics that cannot escape study of God (or that which nothing higher can be thought) whose essence is existence, following Aquinas. But Maritain adds his distinctive 513

KIERKEGAARD, Søren, Works of love (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995 (1847)). 514 DORAN, Kevin P., Solidarity: A synthesis of personalism and communalism in the thought of Karol Wojtyáa/John Paul II (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1996). 515 MARITAIN, Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative (‘A preface to metaphysics: Seven lectures on being').

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element that since persons have an intellectual intuition into being, one can know God through universal intuition in addition to Aquinas’ five proofs. This allows Maritain to develop critical realism, his derivative epistemology (Greek ਥʌȚıIJȒȝȘ, “knowledge”) about what is knowable and how. By placing epistemology under the authority of metaphysics, since “the critique of knowledge is part of metaphysics (page 25),516 he diverged from most modern philosophers to instead follow the realist tradition of Aquinas, John of the Cross, Augustine, and Bonaventure (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum [“The Journey of the Mind to God”]). All the different disciplines according to Maritain are grounded in the argument that a human being knows an object as it actually does exist. Following Aquinas, he held that knowing a thing occurs when the essence of that thing is immaterially present in the mind of the person knowing it. Reflection was required to know the esse intentionale or ‘concept’ of reality as universal and immaterial. So knowing a sensible object in the material world means passively receiving it through the senses and then actively assembling the object immaterially in the mind. A Maritain-Platonist painter can instruct her/his apprentice in what is a beautiful impressionist painting based on the perfection of its methods and materials, as the essence not the ideal/form/concept of a beautiful painting materially hangs in her/his head. The different fields of study or sciences therefore are hierarchically ordered and defined according to the essence of the studied object proper to each field and the degree of abstraction from the fullest conception of the truth which ultimately metaphysics and theology approach. The lower fields of study or sciences are ordered according to knowledge of sensible nature (i.e. limited to observable and measurable phenomena in the material or experimental sciences), physico-mathematical nature (limited to calculable and reasoned contingencies among propositions lacking a direct relationship to their actual objects), and trans-sensible nature (i.e. metaphysics). All the above fields are united by their necessity of knowledge—to grasp a thing in the mind only when “it grasps that upon which that datum is founded in being and intelligibility” (page 23),517 the telos or end of that object which explains its purpose or the ‘why’ it is the way it is. You can explain to a younger sibling interested in automobiles mechanically how a car is 516 MARITAIN, Jacques, Raison et raisons, Essais détachés (‘The range of reason’) (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952). 517 MARITAIN, Jacques, Distinguer pour unir: Les degrès du savoir (‘Distinguish to unite: The degrees of knowledge'), trans. G. B. Phelan (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959 (1932)).

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constructed, but she/he likely will not be satisfied with your description until she/he can see or take it apart and understand how and why it exists the way it does. The ordering of knowledge thus is divided into three types: perinoetical, dianoetical, and ananoetic based on their degree of abstraction with reason. The first type is material scientific knowledge about testable hypotheses and empirical data to explain the mechanistic operations of a material object, regulated by the physical laws of the universe. This knowledge is therefore limited only to the observable traits of the material object; it does not apprehend the why, the telos, or the immaterial cause of the material object. Maritain followed Aquinas by drawing on Aristotle’s innovative philosophical contribution of the ‘four-causal explanatory scheme.’ He argued in his Physics that to truly know an object in science or philosophy, the necessary and sufficient explanation must include four causes (Greek: ĮੁIJȓĮ, ‘cause’ or ‘explanation’): the material, formal, efficient, and final causes that describe respectively what the thing is, what constitutes it, what made it, and what is its purpose (ii. 3).518 The example he gave of a bronze statue goes like this: it is bronze, patterned after the essence/nature/form of a statue in the mind of the sculptor, and created by that sculptor for the end of uniting the matter and form to memorialize the person in whose image the statue is fashioned. Considering this cause framework among other critical innovations, Heidegger argued that Aristotle’s Physics is “the hidden, and therefore never adequately studied, foundational book of Western philosophy”519 that “determines the warp and woof [essential foundation] of the whole of Western thinking...Without Aristotle's Physics there would have been no Galileo.”520 Maritain thus introduces dianoetical knowledge (‘natural philosophy’) which is presupposed by perinoetical knowledge (‘natural science’). Dianoetical knowledge peers behind the phenomena of a natural scientific or material object to more fully understand the ‘why’ behind it. So the human mind abstracts from the sensory input which initially transfers into the mind the object observed in the material world. The mind then using dianoetical knowledge to ‘think through’ the material object to transpose it 518

ARISTOTLE, Physics: Books I and II, trans. W. Charlton (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1984 (4th century B.C.)). 519 HEIDEGGER, Martin, On the essence and concept of ij‫ރ‬ıȚȢ in Aristotle’s Physics Ǻ, 1, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ()). 520 HEIDEGGER, Martin, The principle of reason, trans. Reginald Lilly (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991 (1956)).

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into an immaterial object in the mind that is a universal concept so the essence of the object then resides in the mind of the person who truly knows it. This is the first level of abstraction in knowledge. In the hierarchy of the ‘degrees of knowledge,’ physico-mathematical objects are at a second level of abstraction, including number and quantity. Their essence can only be grasped by the mind once their existence is observed and later can be held without going back to the observable object. Once you teach a child how to count to 10 by showing her/him ten blocks, she/he can then use that concept of ‘10 to do higher order mathematical functions without having to have the blocks materially in front of her/him. The third and final level of abstraction is ananoetic knowledge dealing with metaphysical objects (God, goodness, substance and being, etc.), unlike the previous two forms of knowledge which only deal with material objects. And unlike the previous two, this final level of knowledge using analogical rather than inference (i.e. deductive reasoning from premises to conclusions) and is understood indirectly through the prior two levels of knowledge directly understanding material objects. For Maritain, the metaphysician deals with the highest level of knowledge by studying objects that are the most immaterial, intelligible, and able to be known and so “acquires a proper knowledge, a scientific knowledge, by means that absolutely transcend those of the physicist or the mathematician” (page 37).521 There is one knowledge for instance about the just state. From physics and mathematics, a human being can deduce through empirical measurements how many schools, hospitals, social support, etc. exist for a state and how such material objects work within a state trying to be just by caring for its citizens. But only the metaphysician can truly know if the state is just by knowing what justice is and to what degree the physical, mathematical, and metaphysical considerations inform how closely the state approximates the objective concept and standard of justice. At this pinnacle of knowledge, there is for Maritain ‘suprarational knowledge’ atop of the ‘rational (natural) knowledge’ with its related sublevels described above. Philosophy’s metaphysics thus begins to give way to theology with truth about such intelligible things revealed by God as the ultimate metaphysical object, the Uncaused Cause and Unmoved Mover. Maritain built on the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition here to insert 521

MARITAIN, Jacques, Distinguer pour unir: Les degrès du savoir (‘Distinguish to unite: The degrees of knowledge'), trans. G. B. Phelan (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959 (1932)).

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Augustine and John of the Cross. This suprarational knowledge consists of the ‘theological wisdom’ (the science of divinely revealed mysteries) and the highest ‘mystical theology.’ Theological wisdom is the bridge between natural science (more distantly) and natural philosophy (more proximally) and the highest level of knowledge which is of the divine, or God. It goes further than metaphysics which is limited by the nature of the objects it studies to only approach apprehension of God from the ‘outside’—but faith bridging and drawing upon the reason of natural science and philosophy approaches the divine also from the ‘inside.’ Thus both faculties of the human intellect, reason and faith, more fully equip the person to know truth more completely; Wojtyla, the fellow personalist philosopher influenced by Maritain, would later formulate this similarly: Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).522

For Maritain, it was the use of both faculties provided by a loving God that man could approach and finally grasp the Platonic sun as the full truth about the beautiful goodness, God himself, who comes down to her/him—instead of Adam, Eve, and the modern philosophers constructing their own wax wings out of reason alone as the modern formulation of the forgotten Icaruslike warning. The highest degree of suprarational knowledge and thus of all knowledge levels even over theological wisdom was mystical knowledge according to Maritain. The lower levels of knowledge and their sub-degrees required intuition through concepts. But mystical knowledge “consists in knowing […] Deity as such—according to a mode that is suprahuman and supernatural” (page 253).523 Instead of deductive reasoning as with natural science and physico-mathematics, or with the additional analogic reasoning of metaphysics, the method of mystical knowledge is connatural and contemplative. And in contrast to the lower knowledge levels, this final level does not simply make the learning more wise but also more loving as 522

JOHN PAUL II, “Fides et ratio (‘Faith and reason’)” (Roman Catholic Church, September 14, 1998), http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/docu ments/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html. 523 MARITAIN, Jacques, Distinguer pour unir: Les degrès du savoir (‘Distinguish to unite: The degrees of knowledge'), trans. G. B. Phelan (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959 (1932)).

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wisdom about the truth gives way to love since the Supreme Good, God, is love itself: “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love” (John 4:8).524 Maritain’s system thus helps elucidate why Aquinas argued that God would violate the free will of each person if He revealed Himself mystically to her/him because His infinite goodness would infinitely supersede and overpower the person’s desire for the good and thus he/she would have no choice but to love Him; therefore, God must reveal Himself through each person’s lived experiences and speak rationally from within the intellect and will to preserve the freedom of each person which is a prerequisite for love. Maritain’s connaturality builds on Aquinas’ description of the two ways to know moral virtue: conceptually or connaturally (I-II 45.2).525 Conceptually, a person trained over decades of philosophy education of systematically study can with increasing accuracy grasp the essence of a virtue such as courage. But an uneducated firefighter for instance may more completely grasp courage through her/his repeated decisions to run into burning buildings to save the inhabitants from fatal fires. Within the latter, courage is united with or occurs co-naturally with the person in whom it had become embodied. This less articulate but more complete connatural understanding of courage operates not just within the faculty or power of the intellect (the necessary faculty for conceptual reasoning) but also in the will with its dispositions. Maritain thus adds mystical contemplation to Aquinas’ description of connaturality that is also used to distinguish knowledge of divine truth grasped through theology (‘theological wisdom’ for Maritain) and mystical experience (‘mystical knowledge’) (I 1.6, 3),526 as the spiritual person through connaturality/inclination can come to know divine reality. Notably by incorporating Aquinas’ description, Maritain is also including Aquinas’ adaptation of Pseudo-Dionysius (the 5th century A.D. philosopher who continued the work of Dionysius the Areopagite synthesizing Plato with Christianity) with his second chapter of On Divine Names and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Chapter V, Book X).527 This concept is even more widespread stretching back to the Hindu philosopher, Ramanuja (Sanskrit: ēĭđĭċIJÿ, 1017-1137 A.D.), and the bhakti school proposing a personal relationship with God (Vishnu); the person is thus ordered toward 524

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 525 AQUINAS, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. 526 Ibid. 527 MARITAIN, Raison et Raisons, Essais Détachés (’The Range of Reason').

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the end of spiritual freedom of the individual soul or essence of the person, Ɩtman, united with God or the Ultimate Reality or Cause, Brahman (Sanskrit: Ű˦ċŀ) (page 1-2, 97-102; page 426, Conclusion Part XII; page 5962).528,529,530 For Maritain’s purposes, he introduces connaturality in his thought by drawing from this rich tradition in human history of mystical and religious knowledge to provide a comprehensive theory of knowledge supported within a Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics with notable elements indicating intelligible bridges to and space for existential philosophy and diverse religions/theologies. This philosophical foundation with its highest expression and natural logical conclusion choosing between “the true God or radical irrationality” (page 259)531 provided him the basis and methods to then formulate his political philosophy.

3.3.7. Maritain’s integral philosophy Maritain’s natural law-based moral and political philosophy largely accepted Aristotelian natural law and followed Aquinas further developing the Aristotelian telos of not simply being happy eudaimonia (Greek: İ੝įĮȚȝȠȞȓĮ, ‘happiness’ or ‘wellbeing’) but rather defining happiness as eternal union with God or perfection of human nature. Aristotle uniquely provided the first known philosophically defensible formulation of happiness by arguing that the end of the human being is this interchangeable eu zên (‘living well’) or virtuous activity (1098b30–31) which requires other goods such as adequate friends, power, and wealth so their deficiencies do not impede virtuous actions (1153b17–19).532 A physician in training may experience pressures internally (i.e. fear of incompetence or professional exclusion) and/or externally (i.e. hospital policy requiring certain actions irrespective of conscience considerations) to commit actions she/he judges are unethical (i.e. euthanizing patients because of decreased social utility, 528

INDICH, William M., Consciousness in Advaita Vedanta (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995). 529 DOYLE, Sean, Synthesizing the Vedanta: The Theology of Pierre Johanns (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2006). 530 RAJU, P.T., Idealistic thought of India (London, UK: Routledge, 2006). 531 MARITAIN, Jacques, Éléments de philosophie I: Introduction générale à la philosophie (‘An introduction to philosophy'), trans. E. I. Watkin (London, UK: Sheed and Ward, 1944 (1920)). 532 ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2011 (4th century B.C.)).

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terminating a child at the embryonic level of development in utero following an adverse prenatal diagnosis or sex not desired by her/his parents, etc.). The trainee thus is not happy if she/he concludes the above pressure(s) to be overwhelmingly prohibitive to allow her/him to act virtuously according to her/his intellect and will. Maritain sided with Aquinas in the further refinement of Aristotle’s telos formulation both in its means and end. Like the scholastic thinker, Maritain argued that virtue is achieved through conformity with the natural law (immanently and naturally apparent to humanity for it flows from the higher divine law from God who created humanity and human nature, though the natural law is knowable independent of the divine law). And the end for which it orientates the virtuous person is not simply Aristotle’ earthly description of self-satisfaction from doing the right thing. The purpose of following this objective natural law is so that people can attain eternal union with God including after their mortal life ends, with increasing conformity of one’s life on this side of eternity to the true, good, and beautiful. Rousseau and the other Enlightenment social contract philosophers (whose philosophy collapses after they sought to pick and choose which ThomisticAristotelian elements to continue) adopted the Thomistic elements of divine reward and retribution for good and evil humans. But unlike Rousseau and his menacing threat of an all-powerful deity to compel obedience to the social contract, Maritain and Aquinas understood God to be a loving Father who teaches all humanity as his children through the natural law what is their true good and what makes for a beautiful life so they may share His happiness forever. (Wojtyla would later pick up this point through Maritain’s existential lens to provide a further personalist refinement of this point arguing that the person freely wills to do the virtuous thing not just because it is objectively good for her/him from the standpoint of eternity but also subjectively good including in the present moment as greater happiness is achieved through increasing union with God who is love itself). Maritain asserted that this natural law therefore is knowable through human reason and directs the will to act according to the virtuous action prescribed to achieve the end of eternal beatitude or fulfillment (page 21; 86, 95).533,534 A budding orchestra violinist desires to play the music as led by the conductor not only because it is the music objectively prescribed but also by doing so she/he experiences the joy of participating more fully in the beautiful shared harmony created through accurate playing of the specified 533

MARITAIN, Jacques, La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite (‘Lectures on natural law’) (Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions Universitaires, 1986). 534 MARITAIN, Man and the state (L’homme et l'etat).

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notes built according to the set mathematical rules governing good music as good art. But how is this unwritten natural law known? Maritain argued that connaturality not only makes the highest (i.e. the mystical) level of knowledge of the highest intelligible object of study (i.e. God) possible; it also informs human beings on the first steps on their virtuous journey to the mountain peak or God where truth, goodness, and beauty subsist. The natural law orders man toward this point in which consensus about this is made possible amid pluralism, as people starting on different sides of a mountain base converge with each other as they approach the singular mountain peak together, forming a Thomistic-Aristotelian convergence rather than social contractarian overlapping consensus (more on this in the next chapter). As primitive instincts (for our non-human ancestors of physical force, sexual interaction, and communication irrespective of accuracy later was understood for our human ancestors morally as violence, adultery, deception, etc.) share the commonality of assaults the dignity of each person, the instincts can be reduced therefore to the simple broader description of ‘violent.’ The natural law nudges humanity away from this violence to continue our moral evolutionary development with what Maritain described as a progressive collective moral awareness that approximates but never exhausts the full articulation of the law, even as different individuals or communities in certain times and places may have greater or less grasp on the natural law. It is universal, normative, and imminent though it may be ambiguous in its specifics—yet it would be the logical fallacy of a non sequitur argument to conclude that based on its obscurity alone it cannot provide universal and binding concrete prescripts in a given moral situation, as such prescripts are continually refined through history (and in each person through flexible adoption to each situation in which virtue with increased concrete clarity guides and empowers her/him to do what reason dictates as the ethical act). What is largely absent from (Aquinas and) Maritain’s natural law thus can be added here—evolutionary biology suggests additional intelligibility of natural law from this sub-discipline (with empirical evidence not philosophical deductive proof which would be a categorical error to attempt). Take the example of democratic values. Simply because people can be swayed by latent primitive and immoral violent instincts to amass and abuse power does not prove in itself that humanity has not progressively been moving away from such abuse toward generally more fair democratic political systems. Conceptual versions of individual rights, social equality, and the collective good have been repeatedly expressed throughout history,

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though with increasing clarity particularly since the Enlightenment. Their slow progression does not necessarily indicate such values are futile to discuss, debate, or define.

3.3.8. Consistency of legal philosophy’s progression with Maritain’s natural law Take a more specific example of positive law. Human societies have consistently organized themselves into political units with identifiable leadership structures and codes of individual conduct. As early as 3,000 B.C., Ancient Egypt appears to have produced the earliest recorded law detailed in twelve books and grounded in the religious-philosophical belief system featuring the goddess, Maat (page 418).535 She embodied truth, justice, peace, order, morality, and law who governed the seasons, stars, other gods, and mortals. The Creator gave her supreme authority to change chaos into order (page 46)536 and so rip power from her counterpart (Isfet) who embodied evil, injustice, chaos, and violence (page 485).537 The Coffin Text (funeral inscriptions written on First Intermediate Period coffins) 335a details the belief that human beings once dead cannot pass through the trial of Duat into the eternal paradise of Aaru538 until they are cleansed of Isfet, to the point that in the Duat ritual of the ‘weighing of the heart’ (where the soul dwelled) by the god, Anubis, hearts weighed down by Isfet evil on one side of the scales were heavier than the feather of Maat on the other were denied Aaru and devoured instead by Ammit. Pharaohs as the Egyptian kings were tasked with achieving Maat and ordering society according to truth and justice (page 58; 58-59; 363).539 ,540,541 The earliest recorded political philosophy, political system, and associated positive laws therefore were predicated upon truth and justice overcoming evil and injustice. The 535

BUDGE, E.A. Wallis, The gods of the Egyptians, Volume 1, Kindle (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2012). 536 MCCALL, Henrietta, Mesopotamian myths, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990). 537 REDFORD, Donald B., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Volume 1 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001). 538 RABINOVICH, Yakov, Isle of fire: A tour of the Egyptian further world (London, UK: Invisible Books, 2007). 539 ASSMAN, Jan, Ma’at: Gerechtigkeit Und Unsterblichkeit Im Alten Ägypten, 2nd ed. (Munich, Germany: C.H. Beck, 21. November 2006). 540 Ibid. 541 KARENGA, M, Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics (London, UK: Routledge, 2003).

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philosopher-king was thus duty-bound to safeguard justice by overseeing the human law in this life as a prefigurement of, preparation for, and participation with the divine law. These common elements in positive law can be traced from Egypt to the ancient Sumerian king, Ur-Nammu (2047-2030 B.C.), with his Code of UrNammu reportedly inscribed on cuneiform tablets by his son, Shulgi (20941999 B.C.), as the oldest extant legal code (2100-2050 B.C.).542,543 Remarkable for its legally advanced and pragmatically detailed formulation, the Code broke from its contemporary Babylonian principles of an ‘eye for an eye’ to instead dictate punishments proportional to the crime while still holding murder, adultery, and rape as capital crimes. For its people, this casuist code had its authority and duty to enforce from Ur-Nammu’s kingship in direct lineage to the deities. The Code was the ‘equity of the land’ with its foundation consisting of “the true word of Utu” (the Sumerian God of the sun, truth, and justice like Maat was for the Egyptians). Later Middle East and Asian legal formulations included the Codex Hammurabi of the Babylonian King Hammurabi (1810-1750 B.C.) who expanding his code from Ur-Nammu’s 32 surviving laws544 to 252,545 and the Indian Arthashastra (Sanskrit: æĈŊĚĭ˓, 2nd century B.C.) which grounded laws in a more complex Hindu philosophical framework extended its code to include ethics, economics, and diplomacy. Originating also in the Middle East and also expanding globally to Europe and the Americas, the Canon Law (Latin: jus canonicum) of the Catholic Church was born in the 1st century A.D. and became the first and eventually the longest continually operating Western legal system (adapting legal aspects from the Romans and Jews for Christian theology and governance at the 78 A.D. Council of Jerusalem) (page 86, 115; 44).546,547 The Roman 542

GURNEY, O.R., KRAMER, Samuel Noah, “Two fragments of Sumerian laws,” in Assyriological Studies, ed. Hans G. Guterbock and Thorkild Jacobsen (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 13–19. 543 FRAYNE, Douglas, Ur III period (2112-2004): The royal inscriptions of Mesopotamia (Toronto, Canada: University Press of Toronto, 1997). 544 ROTH, Martha T., Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, Second edition (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997). 545 HARPER, Robert Francis, “The Code of Hammurabi,” The American Journal of Theology 8, no. 3 (July 1904): 601–9. 546 BERMAN, Harold J., Law and revolution: The formation of the western legal tradition, Reprint edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). 547 MCCORMICK, Anne O’Hare, Vatican Journal, 1921-1954, First edition. edition (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957).

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influence on the Cannon principally was the Code of Justinian or Corpus Juris Civilis (Latin: ‘Body of Civil Law’) of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I (Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus, 482-414 A.D.). The next significant legal advancement following Justinian’s Code would take another 14 centuries with a young French general enchanted with the Roman Empire and dead set on becoming modernity’s greater conqueror in the line of Caesar and Alexander. Bonaparte’s Napoleonic Code, guided by the Justinian Code’s underpinning legal philosophy, became one of the only documents to have global impact,548 the first legal code based on human reason instead of religious authority, the first modern legal system to have European-wide adoption through Napoléon’s military conquests, and modernity’s most profound legal reform that provided much of the Western world’s current legal formulations of equality, religious toleration, and property rights (page xxxiii)549 which are increasingly reaching to Asia additionally through the political economic influence of Western-based multinational companies and political alliances. This influence continued to grow globally into the 20th century legal reforms in the Middle East following the post-WWII European exit such that every Arab state based their civil codes on that of Napoléon (page 19).550 Napoleon’s fingerprints in his Code can now be seen in over 1 in 3 nations globally.551 His French Enlightenment-informed liberal legal reforms were amplified by and extended to education as it changed the face of modern European educational systems (page 52)552 as the prominence of religion and theology under the Ancien Régime (French: ‘Old Regime’, 15th century-1792 A.D. under the Valois and Bourbon kingly dynasties) was replaced with the influx of increasingly secular Enlightenment philosophy and modern science.553 Napoleon drew on the French Revolution’s secularization and 548

HOLTMAN, Robert B., The Napoleonic Revolution (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1981). 549 ROBERTS, Napoleon: A Life. 550 ISMAIL, Mohamed A.M., Globalization and new international public works agreements in developing countries: An analytical perspective (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2016). 551 WOOD, Philip R., Principles of international insolvency: Volume 1, 2nd Revised Edition (London, UK: Sweet & Maxwell, 2007). 552 EMSLEY, Clive, Napoleon: Conquest, reform and reorganisation, 2 edition (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014). 553 WILLIAMS, L. Pearce, “Science, education and Napoleon I,” Isis; an International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 47, no. 4 (December 1956): 369–82.

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liberalization of its state and its later conquered territories554 to enshrine his legacy globally in the territories he ruled (and now, as those former lands rule their people to a large extent using his Code’s structure and spirit, his governance continues in a sense to this day). How does the evolution of humanity’s legal codes inform our current discussion of Maritain’s political philosophy? First, every documented human society has naturally organized itself around identifiable rules and rulers. Second, there has been a continual general progression across the last 4,000 years of human history to make legal systems more just, equitable, and transparent. Finally, the earliest legal codes up to the current day sought and still seek respectively to philosophically and theologically justify (including with religiously unaffiliated asserting their own theology that there is no divine or relevant divine authority to appeal and thus ground) the foundations for the legal codes as reflections of a larger belief system reflecting a people’s conception of truth, justice, peace, order, and goodness. (i.e. even the Napoleonic Code under the deist-Napoleon steeped in the Enlightenment tradition was built off Code of Justinian, which itself was built off the philosophical and religious understanding of the Roman and earlier Greek societies and informed by Christian theology and philosophy). As humans have evolved with increasingly sophisticated capacities via the frontal lobe for abstract thought, morality, and language, so have our legal codes guided by those increasingly complex conceptions of what true and just (and thus good) laws should be. This does not prove natural law, but it does allow inductive reasoning to take us back to plausible anthropological evidence for Maritain’s natural law known connaturally to humanity since we began.

3.3.9. Maritain’s integral philosophy responding to the social contract Next, we take up again Maritain’s ‘integral (Christian) humanism’ to explain how he reasons from natural law to the resulting political structuring of society as a response to liberalism including the social contract. As elaborated earlier, this integral humanism stands in contrast to the Enlightenment’s secular humanism by recognizing the human person as a substantive union of the material and immaterial, physical and spiritual, or the body and soul. This humanism further is integral by virtue of each 554

DESAN, Suzanne, HUNT, Lynn, and NELSON, William Max, eds., The French Revolution in global perspective, 1 edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

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person’s common human nature and thus each person is drawn by her/his shared human nature to form an integral human community further united by each person’s common duty to the common good, which itself benefits each person by helping secure the rights necessary for her/his individual and thus communal perfection. Within the two dimensions of the good as individual and communal, Maritain’s temporal/spiritual distinction of the good further clarifies the reciprocal duties between the person and state: the person’s temporal good is subordinated to the temporal common good of her/his community, concurrently with the community’s temporal good subordinate to the individual’s supernatural good or spiritual perfection. The natural law within and binding for each person thus provides the raw material for positive law enacted by a just political order to protect the rights of each person which are necessary for her/his spiritual perfection, as both sets of laws have their authority rooted in the eternal law given by the divine reality, or God who is the Father, Creator, and embodiment of the true, the good, and the beautiful for the human family. So the political state of Rawls (if rigidly defined as rejecting any robust metaphysical foundation) is incompatible with the just state envisioned by Maritain, for all such modern liberal states prohibit any belief system with an objective truth claim to the good, higher than the human reason-supported social contract. Such modern states are built upon the democratic majority whose might makes the right, even when might may dictate abuses of human rights particularly those from different (i.e. non-secular) belief systems (i.e. the US bombing of Japanese civilians in WWII). But for Maritain (unlike Rawls), the hierarchy of the good is the objective and real (not artificially constructed) structure of political society which answers ultimately to an authority higher than itself. Maritain’s critical realism thus rejects popular non-Thomistic Aristotelian modern alternatives including Kantian, positivist, idealist, and pragmatist systems as they all to varying degrees defend nominalism (universal values and ideas are rooted not in reality but solely in the human mind which creates them). For Maritain, the essence of something immaterially exists in the mind of the person who knows her/his essence or nature. Humans cannot create ex nihilo (“out of nothing”). Only God who is existence itself can do so. But more pointedly, Maritain’s metaphysics and epistemology explicitly rejects the foundational move of the modern (particularly Western) philosophical project including the Enlightenment, which Heidegger argued principally and most proximately began with the French philosopher and mathematician, Descartes (page 75).555 He and the majority of modern 555

HEIDEGGER, Martin, “The age of the world picture,” in Heidegger: Off the beaten track, ed. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

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philosophy following him instead of the Platonic and ThomisticAristotelian tradition made in Maritain’s critical assessment the categorical error applying empirical scientific arguments against the metaphysical arguments of his predecessors (or they frankly rejected any robust metaphysics). Modern existential psychology for instance cannot validly be used by modern Cartesians to conclude epistemology is reducible solely to human reason after denial of any preceding metaphysics (any more than modern painting techniques can be used to tell the surgeon how to properly operate). Descartes is recognized for beginning what would become modern philosophy’s epistemological turn by his famous Latin formulation in Discourse on the Method: ‘Cogito ergo sum’’ (English: ‘I think, therefore I am’; French: ‘Je pense, donc je suis’).556 He utilized methodological skepticism to reject any ‘doubtable’ idea including his senses until he was left with only one principle, one idea—thought exists, it exists in him, and thus he exists.557 This philosophical revolt against the scholastic tradition of Aquinas and Augustine (refining the ancients of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates) fueled the Enlightenment as scientific progress inspired the growing cultural belief that reason, not traditional authorities including religion, elevates individual autonomy through direct access to the truth.558 But by rejecting not just traditional authority but any authority higher than each person’s individual reason, Enlightenment thinkers lost their metaphysical and epistemological footing and so fell into an intellectual 17th century civil war between the rationalists (including Baruch Spinoza [1632-1677 A.D.] and Gottfried Leibiniz [1646-1716 A.D.]) versus the empiricists (including Hobbes, Locke, and Hume). So when Kant’s idealism entered the debate with his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der Reinen Vernunft), it was recognized a possible compromise between both warring camps and thus conclusion of their fight.559 As the 1780s anthropologically marked the shift University Press, 2002 (1938)). 556 DESCARTES, René, The philosophical works of Descartes, Volume I, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967). 557 CURLEY, Edwin, Descartes against the skeptics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). 558 BEISER, Frederick C., The fate of reason: German philosophy from Kant to Fichte, Reprint edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 559 VANZO, Alberto, “Kant on empiricism and rationalism,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2013): 53–74.

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from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, Kant sought to philosophically revive the fading Enlightenment project by defending human reason by reason alone as the sole sovereign in the pursuit of truth, above and ordering the insights afforded by religion, traditional morality, and Newtonian science. Kant built on Descartes’s epistemological turn to produce his Copernican revolution in philosophy through the Critique’s primary proposition of transcendental idealism (page 31).560 He continued the Enlightenment rejection of Plato, Aristotle, and essentially the bulk of philosophy up to that point including Aquinas by doubting like Descartes his senses insofar as they inform his understanding of the world. Yet he went further by denying human understanding could even have true insight into the intelligible world. For pre-modern philosophy, metaphysics grounded philosophy, gave rise to epistemology, and then produced all the subdisciplines of philosophy like political philosophy and the natural (material) sciences. This entire hierarchy of the sciences, or degrees of abstraction from truth in its purest form (with metaphysics at the top), was predicated upon the real and effective functioning of the human intellect and will to investigate real objects in the world. The intellect ordered and interpreted sensory input, dictating what the will should do to act upon this input and resulting ideas. This would not do for Kant. His Critique’s transcendental idealism argues that all human “intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance” and that human beings: Can cognize only the former a priori, i.e., prior to all actual perception, and they are therefore called pure intuition; the latter, however, is that in our cognition that is responsible for its being called a posteriori cognition, i.e., empirical intuition (A42/B59-60).

As context, Plato’s ideas and forms are classified as ‘noumena,’ a priori knowledge pre-existing the senses and ordered at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge (page 657), in contrast to ‘phenomena’ that is posterior knowledge of objects knowable to the material senses (page 657).561 Kant believed that experience of the intelligible world is a phenomena requiring passive reception (via the senses into the mind of objects in the world) and active construction (of appearances within the mind of these objects 560

BIRD, Graham, The revolutionary Kant: A commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason, Kindle (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2006). 561 Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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according to a priori rules). Since human reason operating in the mind structures experience of the intelligible world, human beings can know modern Newtonian scientific laws of the physical properties of the universe even prior to experience since these laws reflect reason’s a priori rules (i.e. the rule of cause and effect which frames human scientific pursuits to understand the mechanical causes which produce effects). From here Kant concludes that metaphysics of experience (imminent metaphysics) allows study of metaphysical principles inherent in human experience and thus humans’ capacity to know the sensible world even without direct experience since this world necessarily adheres to the a priori rules of human reason. This metaphysics of experiences entails also a metaphysics of morals since, as Kant argued, humans cannot entertain transcendent metaphysics of being as being since they can never know a thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) that is knowing a priori a thing whose essence and existence is completely independent of the mind (xviii).562 Only by accepting this proposition can science and traditional religion and morality be consistent with each other. He excused himself from trying to prove/disprove God or moral dictates (of divine law ordering human reason toward the good and thus the good of humans). Kant thus kept metaphysics in name but not substance by defining one of experience and nature and so exiling the rest of metaphysics (which he termed transcendent, and the pre-modern philosophers called true metaphysics) to the unknown noumena. Science (now reduced to material science) deals with appearances, while everything else (religion, theology, and implicitly philosophy with ‘transcendent’ metaphysics) can now play nice together. Kant brushed off the question that is begged by this move, namely how is this reconciling science and religion and morality if he relegates religion and morality to the realm of the unknown? Stalin found he could do one of two things to his 20th century dissidents—resolve their concerns or execute them—but only one of those methods actually resolved the problem the solution was meant to address (through rational debate, instead of mass extermination). The cost to this intellectual move is that Kantians must keep God, eternal life, and freedom in the realm of the noumena that can never be known; human reason takes its place by default, being crowned as the highest sovereign power over man ruling a reduced, miniature kingdom of truncated human aspirations and vision. Ulysses and classical man thirsted for the unknown to experience life in its fullness; Kant and modern man (according to their critics) simply resigned themselves to 562

KANT, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (1781)).

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the known to keep them from mutual destruction. Where Socrates and Plato agreed a human being could never fully know or fully grasp the true, the good, and the beautiful, Kant rejected the Platonic attempt to even approximate it by denying the noumena or anything could ever be known-in-itself with the logical implication being the diminishment and eventual despair of ever knowing objective truth to any degree once reason itself and its ideas are doubted. This Kantian move rejected the Aristotelian formulation (‘nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses’ [Latin: ‘nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu’]) which had been reduced by the Enlightenment empiricists (with the elimination of Platonic/Aristotelian metaphysics) to conclude objective knowledge is never possible for the mechanical-like intellect, which is solely a product of sensory perception of material objects. Kantian idealism’s Cartesian move carries with it the rebuke of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 A.D.) levelled against Descartes, echoing Plato’s Socratic critique of Anaxagoras who foresaw this failed argument two millennia prior: I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God (page 16).563

Thus began the Kantian-Copernican revolution of philosophy and modern society. Copernicus is credited with firing the shot that began the Scientific Revolution and thus the Enlightenment, modern philosophy, and modern society with his publication, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Latin: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium), replacing Ptolemy’s geocentric theory with his own heliocentric theory in which the sun not the earth was the center of known world.564 Kant credited himself with ushering in an analogous revolution in philosophy (xvi-xviii),565 by doubting the accuracy of man’s knowledge and how his preconceived ideas temper his experience of reality. But as Copernicus replaced man from being the cosmological center of his own universe, Kant made man the center philosophically. Plato urged man to journey with him up past his shadowy caricatures of the world out into the day to discover the sun, the Supreme 563 MENDLER, Edward C., False truths: The error of relying on authority (London, UK: Hamilton Books, 2014). 564 COHEN, “The eighteenth-century origins of the concept of scientific revolution.” 565 KANT, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (1781))

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Good, illuminating reality around man. Kant called man a fool for thinking anything or anyone was the center (and creator) of his world other than her/him. Kant thus gave a sophisticated, robust defense of Descartes’s anthropological turn, which sought to free humanity via its own reason from being subjected to the sovereign of Christianity, organized religion, and realist metaphysics. Yet the revolution within two brief centuries somberly was seen to have turned man rather into his own sovereign dictator in the totalitarian regimes of the early 20th century. From Plato-Aristotelian realism and the just society ordered toward the true, good, and beautiful further developed by the Christian Augustine and Aquinas, we had Descartes who sought to put man rather not truth at the center of her/his existence (leading to Kant’s idealism and the later skepticism philosophies of Nietzsche and the RousseauRawlsian social contract theories and their totalitarian political regimes of WWII). In the history of ideas, Platonic and Hindu realism were followed by Christian Thomistic-Aristotelianism, Enlightenment with empiricism and rationalism, the resulting counter of Romanticism, the resurgent empiricism under the form of positivism, and finally the current postmodern debate of human rights-duties between the reformulations of the Enlightenment social contract and the revived Neo-Thomistic-Aristotelianism present in the UN and ecumenical bodies overlapping with Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the other major world religions. The modern debate is being rapidly transformed by the groundswell of an ensuing second scientific revolution with AI-GNR changing to a historic degree, human intelligence, biology, physics, and chemistry. Yet the two camps of thought often lack a common philosophical language, with the strict secular/social contract camp not tolerating organized religions and any belief system making an absolute claim to truth (except itself that there is none) nor the Thomistic-Aristotelian and diverse religions proposing converging consensus is possible (and even more fundamentally that human rational and experiential grasp of reality is attainable). Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers who rebelled against the perceived sovereign tyrants of Platonic realist philosophy and organized religion (reportedly allowing human reason alone to wrestle with revealed truth), their descendants of the utilitarianisms and social contrarians tyrannically opposed any discussion of objective truth by metaphysics or the religiously affiliated (despite the logical fallacy of being unable to argue there is no absolute truth while concurrently making an absolute claim about this truth that it is non-existent).

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So how do we avoid the historical philosophical and thus political mistakes of our past? (particularly as our margin for error with AI-GNR is shrinking with its increasingly destructive power over nature, decentralized to more than just state actors). Given the dominance of post-Enlightenment modern philosophy, how can we even discuss AI-GNR or pressing ethical questions when they may not even be accurate appearances in our minds since our reason and senses can fail us if we were to follow the modern strain of thought? How can we even reasonably justify reason itself can answer these questions for us? Consider the example of the raving drunk in the playful The Four Men: A Farrago, by French-British historian, Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953 A.D.), portraying for Belloc the modern philosophers in the denial of reality independent of what they create in their minds: …[The Sailor was mumbling about the Stranger] So it is with philosophers, who will snarl and yowl and worry the clean world to no purpose, not even intending a solution of any sort of a discovery, but only the exercise of their vain clapper and clang…[To the Stranger] Grizzlebeard was saying, with vast scorn: ‘You are simply denying cause and effect, or rather efficient causality.’ To which the Stranger answered solemnly, ‘I do!’ On hearing this reply the Sailor, very quickly and suddenly, hurled over him all that was in the pint pot of beer, saying hurriedly as he did so, ‘I baptize you in the name of the five senses…’ (page 265-266).566

Unlike such Enlightenment and modern thinkers, Maritain rediscovered classical philosophy and Aquinas, tested then trusted his reason and senses, and carefully developed his metaphysics and epistemology with pluralistic modern man’s skepticism in mind. He finally proposed his political philosophy objectively and subjectively defensible across peoples from different belief systems. He believed the oldest Jewish book in the Torah Scriptures about Adam and Eve as our first reported human parents: But the snake said to the woman: ‘You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.’ The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves... (Genesis 3:4-7).567

566

BELLOC, Hilaire, The four men: A farrago (Indianapolis, IN: The Tobbs-Merrill Company, 1912). 567 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised

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To Maritain, the modern philosophers beginning with Descartes repeated our first parents’ logical folly or sin (or act defying human reason which gradually through arguments makes its way to the truthful grasp of the good by virtue of this human reason participating in divine reason). By trying to be God under the guise of seeking wisdom or becoming enlightened, they betrayed their discipline as ‘lovers of wisdom’ by instead seeking to love themselves instead of a God who is love and the Supreme Good; their will and intellect was thus weakened and darkened. They took their eyes off of the truth of good and evil until they could see only themselves (and eventually not even the truth about themselves). And thus losing sight of the good wholly embodied by God the Uncaused Cause, they sank into the evil of what we have seen with the wars and atrocities of the last century. Instead of walking in the garden with God face-to-face as they did in the beginning, the first couple hid themselves from Him in shame. They did not rise in power and kill off God as the overmen. They shrunk in animalistic fear to the primitive level of the serpent from Him, and thus from good. But Maritain believed following in his theological philosophy the religious theology of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that man and his folly was not the center of the universe. The true, the good, and the beautiful was. And thus he went to what reason and faith convicted him was the incarnate Truth, Good, and Beautiful, the “the tree of life” (Genesis 3:22) removed from humanity’s reach with Adam and Eve’s blind ambition and restored by Jesus the Son of God, the new Adam, the Sacrificial Lamb prefigured in the above scriptures. It was about Him who was declared in the last book of the Christian Scriptures that “Blessed are they who wash their robes [in the blood of the Lamb] so as to have the right to the tree of life and enter the city [of the heavenly Jerusalem,” as “the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations” (Revelation 22:14, 2).568 The full faculties of Maritain’s intellect, reason, and faith, philosophy and theology mutually informing each other, convinced him that the wood of Christ’s cross was this tree of life, His Eucharistic as the sacrifice as the New Lamb made him present globally with the celebration of every Catholic mass (and imminently present in the concrete experienced reality of every person, made accessible through her/his reason and belief system subsisting in the daily bread of truth and goodness organizing and directing one to a virtuous life): Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Edition. 568 Ibid.

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Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me (John 6:54-57).569

What the sacrifice of the Passover lamb with its flesh and blood was to the Jewish people signifying God’s eternal covenant as salvation evidenced in their protection from the final Egyptian plague of the firstborn death, so was the new Passover Lamb of Christ with His body and blood transubstantiated from the bread and wine of the Eucharistic celebration. Here for Maritain was the source and summit of truth, the encounter of reason and faith, philosophy and theology, each person and God, and thus each person and the state with a realistic way forward to a near-utopia by rediscovering who the person is by first discovering how her/his providential Father is. And for Maritain, this communion or binding (“religion” or ‘re-ligare’; Latin: to bind/connect again)570 of God and man alone can give rise to the just and thus peaceful modern state. He was not content to simply have someone as a Platonic philosopher-king rule. He wanted the Wisdom Incarnate to govern this city of man, accessible through each person’s faculties for reason and faith within the exercise of her/his intellect and free will ordered toward the true, the good, and the beautiful—accessible through the natural law as apprehended and made incarnate through each person's’ diverse belief system. And as people starting at different points around the base of a mountain converge on the singular summit, they simultaneously come closer to one another. Thus unlike the Enlightenment strictly secular social contractarians of modernity, Maritain believed overlapping consensus was not just possible, but permanent, for it could and should be metaphysically and thus solidly grounded in truth, knowable this reality of God (and causality both materially or physically and immaterially or spiritually) and the person objectively and subjectively through reason and faith together. But practically how does this system work? And possibly more challenging, how is this account defensible and intelligible to modern audiences? So despite the profound influence of Maritain’s robust Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysics, epistemology, and anthropology giving rise to his resulting political philosophy and ethics, the practical critique which Rawls is vulnerable to also applies to Maritain (though the philosophical critique is resolved given the logical consistency and ultimate defensibility including 569

Ibid. HARPUR, Tom, In the pagan Christ: Recovering the lost light (Toronto, Canada: Thomas Allen, 2004).

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metaphysically of Maritain). How do you resolve disagreements about the practical demands of justice amid democratic pluralism and modern suspicion of any religiously influenced political belief system? Like Rawls, Maritain believes that democracy is the highest form of government with its necessary modern components of moral pluralism (though unlike the liberal philosopher, Maritain believed that this belief diversity was due to the evolution of communal Christian moral and political understanding). Maritain’s system does have the strength that Rawls’s system lacks: his natural law-based conception of the good describes how pluralist peoples can eventually converge on an increasingly robust shared conception of the good and thus just governance. Though this process is observed across the centuries of evolving moral human consciousness, it is not clear how to resolve disagreements over days or months when imminent political impasses are on the democratic debate floor. Nor is the process well defined for how Maritain’s conception of the good—which he believes is the highest and most complete conception of the good—can engage different belief systems. (We will take up shortly if the later Thomistic-Aristotelians, MacIntyre and Wojtyla, can solve these practical questions). To make matters worse, the anthropological dimension of these philosophical challenges demands urgency. How do we attain global peace for human society if the modern Enlightenment and resultant antiEnlightenment-driven institutions have crumbling foundations? The UN, World Bank, IMF, the EU, the Pax Americana of post-WWII US-led international political economic stability, and globalized political economies are plagued by underlying logical fallacies and increased nationalistic opposition to their struggling economic policies which jeopardize their future. So where do we turn if we end up in the same place, regardless of whether we take Nietzsche’s route or that of Rawls? The 20th century began with the global human community not simply picking political sides in the world wars but also picking political philosophies. Germany and the Axis nations chose a Nietzschean-style nihilistic thirst for absolute power for the individual, and the Allied nations which would go on to create the UN would choose a Rousseauian/Rawlsian-style social contract hungry for secular humanism to hold that power. Once the primarily secular French-based Enlightenment in the 1600s-1700s purged Judeo-Christianity and religions from informing political systems, regimes had a free-for-all testing different philosophies. WWI’s destruction of older regimes (as the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires developed after the Roman Empire collapse) was followed by Marxist assault on private property. Its adherents including Russia’s Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870-1924 A.D.) and Joseph Stalin (1878-1953 A.D.) and

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China’s Mao Zedong (1893-1976 A.D.) pushed the unsound Marxist premises to their inevitable conclusions to assault their own people until they collectively exterminated 100+ million people as their own ‘property’.571,572 The ineffective League of Nations and Treaty of Versailles were followed by the German Nietzscheans’ rebellion against power decentralization, leading to Hitler’s Nazism and the Holocaust executing over 6 million (60%) of Europe’s Jews including the disabled, Catholic priests, nuns, and other dissidents.573,574 And currently the post-truth Nietzschean political forces and leaders in Russia, Marxist China, and nationalist movements in America and Western Europe demonstrate how the free-for-all continues.575 We keep getting politics wrong because we keep getting philosophy wrong. We keep getting philosophy wrong because we think politics (with popular opinion and scientific technological progress) can replace philosophy. A smart computer can be made smarter, but not wiser (nor the people who look down to the computer for wisdom). So this anthropological modern position begs the question if we have progressed any further in the last 2300 years since Athens executed Socrates for ‘corrupting the youth’ by challenging them to critically examine their rulers, their beliefs, and each person to ‘know thyself.’ If we simply use murder counts from our ruthlessly effective and modern means as a marker, it seems if anything we have reversed our evolutionary clock. So were Socrates and Plato right when they argued only the philosopher can be king, that the only stables states are the just ones? Is there real truth to their conclusions that only a political system with a logically consistent and sound metaphysical foundation, adequate anthropology, moral education, and thus robust political philosophy can safeguard humanity since they are guaranteed by absolute objective truth rather than the absolutist ruling humans throughout history? So let us now test the answers proposed by Maritain and further developed by MacIntyre and Wojtyla. 571

SNYDER, Timothy, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 1 edition (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2012). 572 FENBY, J., Modern China: The fall and rise of a great power, 1850 to the present (New York, NY: Ecco Press, 2008). 573 STONE, Dan, Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011). 574 SNYDER, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. 575 BROOKS, David, “The Enlightenment project,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/opinion/the-enlightenment-project.html.

CHAPTER 4 THOMISTIC PERSONALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

4.1. Background 4.1.1. Philosophical overview This chapter will seek to propose and defend the argument that a Thomistic personalist refinement (via Wojtyla building on Maritain and MacIntyre) of the UN human rights-based social contract can philosophically (logically) and politically (practically) produce a peaceful global human community of states, and thus a defensible global bioethics paradigm, in place of the failed Enlightenment social contract tradition (of political liberalism, the other internationally prominent political philosophies and bioethics globally) and within the UN ethical system. We will test here if we can arrive at a sustainable (personalist) contract (or communion), not simply a social contract. The liberal social contract tradition and the associated bioethics paradigms broke with metaphysics in the 18th century in Western Europe to principally define how pluralistic beliefs can be protected and thus humanity’s sustainable flourishing independent of pre-modern philosophy and affiliated religions. The most complete formulation of this tradition is the Rawlsian overlapping consensus of belief systems that supposedly agree for reasons inherent in their own systems certain shared values and beliefs about the just state honoring its duty to protect their individual rights. Yet we have shown in the preceding chapters that this tradition not only implodes in upon itself due to its own logical fallacies, but it is also inferior to ThomisticAristotelian personalism to logically and practically protect pluralism and human rights, not just the committed Rawlsian minority of the global human family who hold secular/deist beliefs and are implicitly intolerant of all other belief systems due to their respective claims about a universal conception of the good.

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This chapter will make the case that pluralism is too heavy a philosophical and political challenge to the social contract (with its overlapping consensus) for it to support this load of modern reality. But a ThomisticAristotelian (specifically a personalist) refinement of human rights-duties (with its “converging consensus”) does not simply protect pluralism—it can advance it to its full potential. Without metaphysics with its robust Thomistic-Aristotelian formulation, the modern Enlightenment philosophies lent themselves alongside with the natural/material sciences to weaponization for politics making the right be dictated solely by the might (as the Enlightenment rejected an objective conception of the ‘right’ or good). True consensus comes not if society is conscripted to sign their names in bloody allegiance to this tyrannical social contract with a sub-group of peoples within the state dictating at that current hour how their power makes the temporary ‘truth.’ True consensus comes if the Cartesian anthropological turn, the Kantian Copernican revolution, or he Enlightenment’s darkening of the intellect and eroding of the will is reversed and truth (and thus a truthful conception of the good), not man, is placed back in the intellectual center of the universe. True consensus, as the below will seek to demonstrate, is not overlapping based on power—it is converging based on philosophy as pluralistic peoples starting on different sides of a mountain base will inevitably converge with each other as they approach the summit. Overlapping consensus implies a point upon which overlap occurs; and thus such point is not necessarily prevented from perpetually shifting as a moving target with transient popular opinion depending on who is in power. But converging consensus implies a point fixed for peoples in time and space, for it reaches within then beyond a people’s belief system in their unique time and space, thus grounding this consensus solidly. Rawls’s overlapping consensus assumes anthropologically and metaphysically that man made her/his own universe and thus was not bound even by reality which was at best an irrelevant unknown. MacIntyre and Wojtyla’s converging consensus (as an extension of Maritain) as this chapter will attempt to show integrally defends an anthropological and metaphysical account of man as a person created by an Uncaused Cause and orientated toward her/his final good which is her/his happiness united with this Supreme Good. Thus the person is bound by reality, and the diverse belief systems of persons are therefore attempts in the concrete cultural context of each person to reach through the intellect and will to this good. Such belief systems bound by this reality reach toward this fixed point. For Rawls, consensus was perpetually elusive and never necessarily guaranteed. For Wojtyla, consensus was permanently alluring and always necessarily

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generating the (may we dare as Wojtyla’s intellectual companion, von Balthazar, argued) inevitability of the union of each person as a seeker with the eventual good. Unlike for Rawls, peace is therefore probable not just possible for Wojtyla.

4.1.2. Pluralistic and anthropological overview This converging consensus is built on the firm philosophical and political tradition of humanity, demonstrable in its logical consistency, the soundness of its premises, and its compatibility with anthropology, evolutionary biology, and global political economics. And at the peak, no king-of-thehill bloody combat can ensue with different peoples and belief systems battling as they have since man emerged on the African plains. There the philosopher-king rules, for Wisdom, Love itself, God as the Uncaused Cause as the True, Good, and Beautiful reigns and orders humanity on that metaphysical mountain—or in the words of the ancient Jewish people: In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say: Come, let us go up to the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways,…He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again (Isaiah 2:2-4).576

To the Christians, Muslims, and Jews, this conception of the good is a loving God, known respectively as the Triune God, in Arabic the ௌ, and Yahweh (Hebrew: ʤʥʤʩ), who desires eternal union with each person as her/his final end. For Hindus, the good is Brahman, and the final end is the union of this ultimate reality with each person, or moksha or nirvana allowing the person attaining it to be freed from the reincarnation cycle of suffering and attachment. This Nirvana (Sanskrit: ĮċęĭŊ Ć, ‘quenching’) is similarly the ultimate end for Buddhists but for them is also the highest good with similar liberation from the cycle of suffering (as of course the two above statements for Hinduism and Buddhism acknowledges that there is a richness of the diversity of the various sub-traditions within each religious tradition, and thus the statements at best attempts an accurate generalization—but one that cannot capture the full range of the relevant sub-traditions). For secular 576

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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humanist atheists and secular adherents typically articulating their basic belief system premises in the political liberalism tradition, the highest good and end typically is considered avoidance of doing evil and living nonviolently together in a tolerant society (yet that is often intolerant to the religiously affiliated). Each tradition starts at different points of the mountain base but nonetheless converges on a similar end guided by different perspectives and descriptions of the same reality of the summit. There at that converging point, there will be no more war—or weaponization of AI-GNR. Citing the political reality that there are pluralistic conceptions of this good does not philosophically lead necessarily to the conclusion that there all beliefs (and socio-cultural identities) systems are reducible to one another, nor that there are no unifying objective conceptions of the good but only that there are different footpaths with the same direction—upwards.

4.1.3. Integrated argument’s overview This chapter thus means to propose and defend via Thomistic personalist refinement from its recent champions how the above image accurately describes and defends this common human reality, and its implications for global peace. The previous chapters explored political liberalism, particularly that formulated by John Rawls (including a possible theoretical revision with Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism to strengthen it), as a promising and popular theoretical framework to explore the practical questions surrounding AI-GNR, yet with philosophical and political challenges to remaining solely in the Rawlsian tradition. The immediately preceding chapter traced the alternative of Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law via Maritain, by first examining the associated anthropological factors (including evolutionary biologic and political economic forces influencing and compatible with its development). This chapter seeks to first start with Thomistic-Aristotelianism and then refine it with a MacIntyre and Wojtylan revisions of Maritain’s system making it more intelligible and defensible to liberalism and its social contract embodiment as the dominant framework for the modern power stakeholders. The summary of the earlier developed argument for the necessity of this philosophical move is as follows. The Western Enlightenment-inspired social contract framework of the UN has produced an unprecedented political consensus, coordinating a historical global success track maintaining world peace for over 70 years. Yet, the logical limits of this framework are increasingly defining the limitations of this system to facilitate rational deliberation and consensus among and from pluralistic

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belief systems, particularly on timely matters such as the more general ethical case of the Syrian refugee crisis and the more technically detailed ethical case of AI-GNR. The only practical recourse this tradition has to formulating ethical consensus is by eliminating rather than facilitating pluralistic ethical debate by violently mandating only religiously unaffiliated/secular belief systems can be considered in the debate (given the limitations of their philosophical structures to allow a common moral language with diverse belief systems including those metaphysically grounded and religiously affiliated). This move fails among other reasons philosophically as the social contract’s omission of a metaphysical and thus epistemological foundation (i.e. that the true good can be known and articulated) prevents it from logically concluding that any universal conception of the good (including those with a religious influence) is demonstrably false. It also fails politically as it would exclude 9 out of every 10 persons globally for their identification with a specific belief system that overwhelmingly articulates an objective universal conception of the good (i.e. in order of population prevalence, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc.) that is not subjectively defined (i.e. atheism or agnosticism). The social contract’s main modern contender thus is natural law, with its most robust and longest-running formulation being ThomisticAristotelianism with its particular modern personalist refinement (or articulation of the personalist principles latent but previously underexplored in it). It may not only escape the logical and pragmatic failures of the social contract tradition, but it may provide a description and justification for how timely and detailed ethical consensus on particular topics can be achieved, even amid (and particularly because of) pluralism, without sacrificing the human anthropological tradition indicating the compatibility of natural law philosophically and politically with human nature that is manifested in each person’s intellect, free will, and experience of the world through these capacities. Yet the Thomistic personalist foundation of the UDHR and thus the UN ethical system is not well formulated nor are the articulations done so in a way that is widely intelligible to the social contract tradition. And thus we must assess now how can the Thomistic personalist natural law ethics—fundamentally key in the formulation of the UN ethical structure evidenced in the UDHR/UDBHR—can be articulated and defended by its two influential recent theorists, MacIntyre and Wojtyla.

4.2. Maritain’s refinement of Locke MacIntyre shares with Maritain his support for the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition. Yet he contrasts notably in his development and application of it

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to political philosophy and ethics at the intersection point with the liberal social contract tradition. To understand this, let us clarify here the ethical system and political philosophy of the French UDHR philosopher as it relates to MacIntyre. Maritain as a Catholic Christian sought to anchor human rights in a Thomistic-Aristotelian framework, in which natural law at the ethical minimum could produce ‘personalist’ democratic principles amid pluralism, balancing the social contract extreme of radical individualism and the communism extreme of totalitarianism (page 128).577 Even better, virtue ethics would be promoted for the communal defense of the common good and for the individual challenge to properly train one’s freedom to lead the person to her/his fulfillment, completion, or perfection. At best, a Christian conception of the good being a loving God would draw all peoples into eternal union with Himself, though this highest and most complete formulation of the good was not necessary to be embraced by all people’s amid their pluralism but only its initial premises (subsidiarity and solidarity as an introduction and thus bridge to the more complete formulation) for reasons inherent and compatible with their own belief systems. The Catholic social doctrinal principle of subsidiarity would nourish intermediate non-governmental agencies fostering social action at the societal sector closest to where the action is required (i.e. church and community groups would receive tax credits from the government to empower their outreach in after-school program for youth at risk for joining violent gangs instead of the governmental organizations leading such initiatives, given the greater knowledge of needs and communal acceptance of such societal organizations). Maritain believed in the philosophical and political defensibility of this approach particularly in the US and similar politically liberal states because he argued liberal human rights formulation in the social contract tradition poisoned human rights theory by robbing Christian Thomistic-Aristotelianism from its foundation, seeking to rather replace this gap with a liberal subjective formulation of the good defined by each person as the final authority of what the good is (page 81).578 He therefore had critical appreciation for what liberal philosophers including Hobbes to Locke had contributed to human rights theory by developing latent concepts within and necessary implications of the Thomistic577

WALLACE, Deborah, “Jacques Maritain and Alasdair MacIntyre: The person, the common good and human rights,” in The Failure of Modernism, ed. Brendan Sweetman (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1999). 578 MARITAIN, Jacques, The Rights of Man and Natural Law (Gordian Press, 1971).

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Aristotelian tradition (page 64).579 He justified this conclusion based on the following. Like the Eastern religious and belief systems such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, Aquinas’s natural law theory argues each person by the communal aspect of her/his identity as a societal member has duties to the common good, or the societal conditions necessary for fostering the individual good of each person. This active dimension of the person’s societal identity has an implied passive dimension of the individual’s rights, protected by justice and the duty of persons to the common good to respect the individual good and thus rights of each person necessary for her/his fulfillment as selfless contributors to society. A mother or fathers grows in virtue and personal fulfillment the more she/he generously loves and serves each other and her/his children. Like Socrates and Plato, Aquinas started with the just ordered society and then reasons down to the individual person who can become a fulfilled person (precisely because the society is constituted by persons committed to the common good that protects and provides for completion of this path for each person). Justice is the ordering principle and chief virtue of the society and thus the person by safeguarding her/his freedom (willingly placed in service to the common good which requires giving to each her/his due), ordering this freedom toward the objective final end of the person namely the fulfillment of her/his nature. And so Maritain rejects the position of the liberal social contractarians starting with the individual and reasoning to the society, with freedom being the highest ordering principle by placing individual rights over societal duty. Maritain thus argues that the liberal tradition has disproved its validity by countless historical examples up to WWII in which the individual defining her/his own truth through the unbridled exercise of her/his freedom only enslaves man to her/his primitive passions, allowing the strongest man to enslave societies and the person to never actually be free. Rawls similarly started with the individual and allowed her/him to define her/his own conception of the good, her/his own ends. But Maritain following Aquinas started with the good and then reasoned to the end which the universal objective conception of the good defines for each person, in the same way for example that the good details fulfillment of each child and thus defines societal duty to bring the child up in the right path to that fulfillment. Allowing a child to define her/his own good (and subsequently says she/he wants to be a bird and proceeding to jump off the roof) is not a good or just action according to Maritain. He thus followed Aquinas by first 579

Ibid.

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considering the good and thus the ends, supernatural and natural of the person. The supernatural end of the person as the most complete form of happiness of eternal union with God, or the highest good, is higher than the natural good of temporal happiness such as achieving the desired job or home. The telos of each person therefore, in both its supernatural and natural aspects, guide the definition of what the rights of the person are. MacIntyre follows Maritain as well up to this point but breaks where Maritain breaks with Aquinas. The French theorist sought to refine Thomistic-Aristotelianism by asserting that not all human rights must first consider the whole social role a person has in her/his community. He thus defined a particular class of rights as primordial ones derived simply “from the simple fact that man is man” (page 63),580 similar to how Locke and Rawls did from a pre-political standpoint. He therefore distinguished rights that are primordial (derived necessarily and directly from natural law), national laws (derived necessarily from natural law with specific conditional concerns), and positive law (derived contingently from natural law) (page 69-70).581 These primordial rights are notably problematic for Aquinas and thus MacIntyre as Maritain maintained that the supernatural end of each person and her/his membership in family confers these rights, prior to membership in civil society. Such rights including religious freedom and life are dictated by intrinsic human dignity rather than conferred by the state and are thus higher than duties and the temporal common good (page 65, 81-82).582 Maritain distanced his rights theory from Locke’s by distinguishing between his pre-political conception and Locke’s pre-social conception, though he shares the common principle of rights taking precedence over societal duties and the common good. He therefore is subject to the same philosophical critique as Locke and his social contract intellectual descendants to defend how this pre-political or pre-societal distinction supposedly justifies rights (or subclasses of them) taking precedence over duties and the common good. Aside from the origin of human rights, Maritain further sought to further distance himself from Locke and the liberal social contractarians by his different formulation of the structure and substance of rights. Similar to Wojtyla, Maritain formulated a positive structure of rights as ‘freedom for’ rather than the liberal social contractarians’ negative structure of ‘freedom from.’ Locke began with the individual as the king of her/his castle seeking 580

Ibid. Ibid. 582 Ibid. 581

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primarily the satiation of her/his self-defined passions or ends, protected via rights from societal interference or claims on the individual to contribute to the common good which could be at odds with the individual good. But Maritain began with society as a fraternal community of individuals, bound by a unified desire and duty seeking primarily to nourish each individual’s good or fulfillment, protected by the individual’s rights to that personal and communal fulfillment. The substance of Maritain’s positive structure was therefore a Thomistic-Aristotelian teleology which ordered rights and duties according to an objective truth standard of what the good is for human flourishing according to a common human nature. Thus, the liberal exercise of individual rights has no connection to individual duties or an objective standard able to resolve conflicting rights claims. Liberal political philosophy and thus ethics inevitably devolves into substance-less claims, resolved only by the mightiest individual or community. Maritain’s Thomistic-Aristotelian philosophy continually evolves with substance-based claims, refined with a growing moral societal consciousness via natural law to define and logically defend the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind the principles derivative from a just societal and moral order (and thus a common moral language to resolve conflicts about competing rights within and between persons). Like a child growing into full flourishing of her/his personal maturity with increasing clarity, she/he understands the father’s desire for her/his good and the moral actions required to achieve it. Maritain similarly held that the just person and just society will progressively understand the objective hierarchy of the highest good, which as a Catholic Christian he termed ‘God,’ with His will for each person’s good which is over the political duties of society to defend the necessary requirements for that, which in turn is over the individual desires or formulations of what each person believes constitutes her/his good. The Catholic Church followed by the other world religions and belief systems in Maritain’s view would continue to help each person and society clarify this order, as the Socratic person first emerges from the darkened cave of ignorance and vice to gradually see more clearly what the good is and what it requires for her/his good. I recall a time as young child when I wanted to fly, so I logically—or so I thought—devised a plan to attach a rope to my belt loop and leap into flight off the nearest tree limb. Then the loop broke and I fell back to the reality of the hard ground. My father later took me up on a sea plane over the coastal wetlands with my brother to fly over the beautiful, quiet marshes. In accordance with Maritain, this was a brief analogical snapshot in my larger education in moral education, seeing a father who helped me fine tune my desires as I am driven by an ultimate

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thirst for the infinite, and what actions including moral would get me there (including not puncturing a lung by jumping out a tree). So unlike Locke and the liberal social contractarians and ethicists who rejected Thomistic-Aristotelianism when they failed to refute it, Maritain sought to improve the human rights theory from Aquinas and the ancient philosophers with modern insights. This pursuit led Maritain to vigorously defend the 1948 UDHR as a necessary (but not sufficient) universal statement of moral precepts enabling a just and thus peaceful global community (convinced that natural law alone could justify these international moral standards but politically concerned there may never be consensus amid the diverse belief systems about this defense or the precept’s philosophical structure aside from its agreed on conclusions). Yet Maritain asserted in the final philosophical summary leading up to the Declaration’s ratification that universal agreement on the standards but not their theoretical justification was possible as a search for theoretical defense was “barred at once by irreconcilable divisions” (page 72).583 Yet there were Thomists who had a different approach to moral consensus particularly with natural law in the modern age of pluralism unfamiliar with the natural law. So enters MacIntyre.

4.3. MacIntyre refinement of Maritain Scottish Marxist turned Thomistic-Aristotelian philosopher, MacIntyre, tested both Locke’s liberal tradition resistant to pre-modern philosophy and Maritain’s Thomistic-Aristotelianism which sought to reach out to liberalists, and found both logically wanting and personally unsatisfying. MacIntyre’s analysis of the incommensurability among modern belief systems (diagnosed as such but not solved by the modern Nietzsche) and his recourse to Aristotelianism in After Virtue has been recognized as one of the 20th century’s seminal works of political and moral philosophy.584 He argued the liberal tradition was not philosophically salvageable for it rejected philosophy itself in its attempt to break from the philosophy of Thomistic-Aristotelianism specifically and metaphysics generally (Chapter 6-8). Rejecting an alphabet does not create a new language for a people—it rejects the capacity for language itself and thus the ability to resolve disagreements among persons. By discarding the metaphysical and resultant 583

UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION, “Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations.” 584 LACKEY, “What are the modern classics? The Baruch Poll of great philosophy in the twentieth century.”

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epistemological foundation of rationality to create moral consensus based superficially on an ideal of rationality, the liberal tradition according to MacIntyre lost the only methodology able to logically and ultimately defend such a conclusion—thus all formulations of their principles of rationality and consensus are mutually and ultimately incommensurable and indefensible (Chapter 4-6). Without being and the resultant concept of cause and effect (central to metaphysics), Enlightenment and their modern philosopher descendants cannot prove their systems actually exist nor exist as defensible philosophical systems. MacIntyre does not disagree with Maritain that there are irreconcilable divisions among pluralistic belief systems. MacIntyre does reject the conclusion (based on the logical fallacy that it necessarily follows) that moral consensus is impossible; he instead argues that irreconcilability is only inevitable from within the liberal tradition (which devolves into a Nietzschean battle of subjective assertions of competing wills to power). He thus advocates for modernity’s return to the pre-modern Aristotelianism on the grounds of its logical defensibility (Chapter 18) that can finally resolve disagreement among persons and so enable the just state.585 MacIntyre sought to defend this assessment and need to resurrect Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law-based political philosophy its related virtue ethics by beginning with a historical assessment of the great philosophical schism sparked by the Enlightenment. He chronicles in After Virtue how the liberal philosophers in an attempt to produce a definitive argument for universal moral rationality justified solely by reason sabotaged their own project by discarding Thomistic-Aristotelian teleology as the foundation for an externally defensible and internally consistent metaphysics and epistemology (and thus defensible political philosophy and ethics) (Chapters 4-6). These liberal thinkers discovered the same thing that misguided builders do when trying to be revolutionaries: create a structure without a foundation—the structure may be elegantly complex, consistent within itself, but without a firm foundation it will soon collapse. Without teleology and thus an underlying metaphysics and epistemology, the builders of the Enlightenment ‘home’ as an envisioned dwelling for all humanity ultimately shattered under the weight of its inevitable conclusions, as articulated by the Enlightenment intellectual descendent, Nietzsche. MacIntyre argued how this forerunner to the modern nihilist and thus anarchist philosophers (i.e. abandoning rational defense for a just state and peoples by instead relying on rule by the strongest) questioned how the 585

MACINTYRE, Alasdair, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2013).

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liberal tradition can logically justify moral rationality at all (page 132 and 315).586 This tradition had rejected logic by rejecting metaphysics and epistemology as the necessary foundations for (formal) logical arguments. So the collapsed debris of liberalism is relativism, emotivism, and nihilism. MacIntyre asserts that modern man cannot build a bridge between defensible philosophy (i.e. Thomistic-Aristotelian teleology) to this indefensible modern philosophical tradition—one can only abandon the futile project (i.e. resurrecting the collapsed Enlightenment philosophy) to return home to her/his Thomistic-Aristotelian home (Chapter 18). Thus ethical debate to reach resolution according to this former Marxist philosopher must first assess not its premises and conclusions but its invoked belief tradition from which every argument is necessarily created from. Each tradition possesses its own latent anthropological, philosophical, and theological concepts, assumptions, and argumentative methodologies as each language shares commonalities with other languages while still being distinguished by its own unique traits. The Chinese language cannot be demonstrated as a superior linguistic paradigm of communicating the accuracy of a beautiful sunset if you only speak Spanish. Similarly, a Thomistic-Aristotelian may be partly intelligible or convincing to a liberal social contractarian and vice versa but not definitively convincing for expressing a purported philosophical reality. MacIntyre thus proposed in the presence of irreconcilable belief systems that the only philosophical recourse is technical, not theoretical. A liberal thinker can only attempt to convince a Thomist of the superiority of her/his own philosophical paradigm over the other by demonstrating from within the other’s paradigm its supposed logical fallacies and failures which push it to an epistemic crisis (i.e. the agent realizing either the internal inconsistencies of its premises, its logical fallacies causing a breakdown of sound premises supporting resulting conclusions, the inability of the philosophical paradigm at all to coincidence with human experience, or its inability to produce robust conclusion for a specific moral dispute). This discursive tactic is the philosophical equivalent of the martial arts form of Japanese jujutsu (Japanese: 蛠菵, “gentle technique”) or Brazilian jiujitsu in which an unarmed or weaker person can defend her/him-self from an armed or larger opponent by using the assailant’s force against her/him without one’s own force directly (page viii).587 Regarding the father of the Enlightenment philosophical project, Descartes, MacIntyre demonstrates 586 587

MACINTYRE, Alasdair, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2013). TAKAHASHI, Masao, Mastering Judo (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2005).

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this logical jujutsu in that Descartes doomed his argument (from the beginning by building a philosophy of pure and isolated rationality that could be known with epistemological certainty by doubting anything could be known metaphysically) by committing to “an invitation not to philosophy but to mental breakdown, or rather to philosophy as a means of mental breakdown” (page 462).588 Once everything is doubted, nothing can be known. Here MacIntyre adapts the paradigm shifts of Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996 A.D.) and the rational transitions of Imre Lakato (1922–1974 A.D.) in their philosophies of science. In the empirical sciences, revolutions such as the Copernican occur when one paradigm is replaced with another. The scientific community recognizes that a new paradigm better captures the aims of the older describing an aspect of the material universe (but escapes its failures when presented with seemingly contradictory new situations that cannot be accounted for by the older) (page 15-17).589 So too a philosophical tradition can demonstrate how the argumentative force of another tradition when pushed to its inevitable conclusions fails when new thought experiments, ethical disputes, or human experiences are presented. Like a physician who does not abandon a dying patient but rather recognizes when nothing more can be done to treat her/him, MacIntyre was not judging liberal thinkers inferior (but rather their tradition that imprisoned their liberty rather than unleashing it). A convicted felon cannot free himself by naming herself/himself her/his own judge and jury—similarly liberalism and its modern formulations as nihilism, social contract political philosophy, and emotivism ethics do not provide a decisive philosophical repudiation of Thomistic-Aristotelianism or its compatible traditions by denying its inherent rationality (with its necessary metaphysical and epistemological roots) and instead providing their own rationality isolated from justification except semantic or democratic construction. The liberal thinker can create an alternative version of philosophy as the criminal can the justice system, but it does not make either just. Their narratives do not disprove there is still a judge and jury, separate from the felon who society recognizes as rebelling against the laws governing the people. Asserting first one can do (nearly) whatever one wants and then second creating an ethics to justify this is not philosophy—it is the inevitable consequence of the Enlightenment project making man her/his own god and creator of 588

MACINTYRE, Alasdair, “Epistemological crises, dramatic narrative, and the philosophy of science,” The Monist 60 (1977). 589 Ibid.

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her/his own truth, which unfortunately only perpetuates the imprisonment of such a ‘revolutionary’ ethicist in the prison of her/his own ignorance as the Platonic prisoners, enabling her/him to ignore rather than squarely face her/his epistemological crisis (made painfully real every time another invokes this kind of self-made ethics to justify actions that are manifestly violent, brutal, and evil as the 20th century’s totalitarian regimes). The modern world of the early 1900s was dominated by the liberal consequences of rule-by-the-strong political philosophy and self-made ethics, and thus it watched in growing horror when one of its own unleashed inevitable wide-scale violence as seen in the Holocaust and WWII. The UDHR therefore remains solely an intellectual construct, a social contract, or a comforting idea that only perpetuates a global ethics and bioethics of universal recognition in human rights and duties existing as a philosophy in name only, with no substance or justification to separate it from the same self-made ethics which created the horrors it was meant to counter. If a person wants to argue she/he can do whatever she/he wants, MacIntyre counters that the person should at least be intellectually honest enough to admit her/his arguments with a philosophical superficial layer do not philosophically justify her/his rebellion from morality (or the need to prove including metaphysically the conclusion). It is interesting that in an attempt to construct universal maxims by pure rationality alone, the Enlightenment thinkers created their own rationality as the same cold, calculative, distant god of their deist secular religion. MacIntyre follows Maritain in arguing that the God of the ThomisticAristotelians is the universal conception of the good who is personal and immanently present lovingly as a Father for every person as a child, guiding each to her/his personal fulfillment in Him out of love for each person for her/his own good (treating each as an end only and not as a means). But for the Enlightenment thinkers and their modern successors, this God is dead, replaced by their own creation of the sterile and supreme human rationality which begets and justifies itself by self-assertion rather than argumentation (and imposes this universal conception of the ‘good’ upon all belief systems as they conscripted into this societal ordering toward what becomes the selfseeking ends and rights for the strong at the expense of the weak with unending irreconcilable rights conflicts among all). MacIntyre thus was not satisfied to retreat to the smoldering fragments of the collapsed Enlightenment project. A new philosophy, or rather a renewed discovery of the old, was the only route he saw to building a home worthy of modern man, and capable of uniting every person through her/his

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common humanity and ultimate end. He therefore offered the alternative proposal of an externally defensible and internally consistent political philosophy and ethics built on the teleological Thomistic-Aristotelianism. MacIntyre applies his historical approach to assessing universal consensus on human rights, such as with Maritain and the larger UN social contractarians, concluding that it fails if it justifies itself only with democratic consensus for it reflects only the failed liberal instinct to make empty philosophical claims outside of any defensible philosophical structure from the tradition within which it subsists. A rebel who continually rebels for the sole sake of being free of larger communities makes himself the king of a (lonely) community of one. And so such rebel communities cannot be substantively united to create a just, peaceful global community (but rather only a superficial and transient cease-fire alliance when mutual interests are temporarily aligned). Therefore to MacIntyre, modern liberalists including the UN members (if they adhere solely to a social contract system) are moral orphans, deliberately dissected away from larger philosophical traditions in their attempt to avoid theoretical divides which are not bridge by avoidance but only shared philosophical inquiry and debate (page 100).590 Universal rights predicated on a self-referencing ethical system (without an underyling metaphysics [particularly a Thomist structure which he views as the most robust formulation of metaphysics, building from the one created by Aristotle as metaphysics’ father]) fails because it is practically indefensible (for its sole reliance on a foundationless construction of pure rationality) and theoretically flawed for three reasons. (1) The UN-style of universal human rights (emphasizing its social contract dimension alone) denies the anthropological and philosophical evidence for human dignity as a relational quality. Human dignity exists first metaphysically (as its cause is ultimately the Uncaused Cause, God, creating each person as a rational animal whose reason is meant to participate in His divine reason) and then know epistemologically (because of social relationships via the communicable essence of sharing a common human nature and thus telos). Dignity exists not as a construct or concept within the false liberal assertion that the person is solely an autonomous individual who happens to coexist with other autonomous agents within a social contract required to prevent a continual state of war as each battles over self-asserted and self-defined conceptions of the good and resultant ‘rights’ created subjectively by each person and then codified politically in a final formulated list of rights (page 590

MACINTYRE, Alasdair, “Community, law, and the idiom and rhetoric of rights,” Listening 26, no. 2 (1991): 96–110.

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104).591 In the social contract-imbued universal human rights conception, persons are moral strangers to each other and thus must be constrained by the power of international and positive law, predicated solely upon a political account of consensus supporting ‘human dignity’ only as a semantic construct that semantically (not metaphysically and thus objectively) generates ‘rights.’ For this tradition-less new tradition, no philosophical justification is given or possible that defends why it is not simply propaganda, socially useful fabrications to domicile the masses. For MacIntyre, persons are not moral strangers, they are brothers and sisters in a common human family, drawn by a common human nature and thus sharing a common purpose to exist peacefully through their unique personhood and justly in a global community which nourishes their full flourishing. (2) Next, universal human rights currently defined in modern philosophy implicitly defend an aggressive individualism which thus limits morality as a philosophical discipline founded and dependent upon the relational nature of persons (who commonly possess human dignity that makes them each uniquely duty-bound to foster the rights of the other to contribute to and be served by the common good safeguarding their individual flourishing) (page 105).592 There is no ethics on an island of one, since there is no one else to whom the person must behave ethically towards. Following Aquinas, MacIntyre argues morality is a social enterprise that is communally and individually developed by the practical reason of each person and operates only in the concrete historical context of the society in which persons dwell. Kant for instance argues that one should not murder because it violates the categorical imperative, which he created as a construct of pure rationality which supposedly thus must be obeyed by everyone as an ethical mandate because it is valid, solely because it is rational. MacIntyre in contrast argues a person should not murder because the would-be victim is a member of the same human family in her/his society which instructs the person how to live virtuously in accordance with her/his human nature (including its constitutive elements of her/his natural desires to achieve her/his end of full moral flourishing). An Olympic gold medal gymnast is taught by her/his coach and encouraged by her/his family to excel at gymnastics through the virtues of discipline and fortitude to fulfill her/his desire to become the best gymnast she/he can become. And thus the gymnast conforms her/his behavior to the rules, regulations, and principles of excellent gymnastics, not as a criminal is compelled to follow that which infringes externally on her/his desires, but as a societal means speaking internally within each 591 592

Ibid. Ibid.

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person toward self-fulfillment. A gold medalist does not resent the requirement of frequent practice; she/he conforms her/his gymnastic behavior to this requirement as a given reality necessary for the realization of her/his deepest desire. The gymnast cannot win gold on an island of one. She/he achieves it within a society, as the virtuous person achieves her/his fulfillment within a society with ethical, virtuous actions. (3) Finally, MacIntyre argues how universal rights (predominantly invoked in modern socieities as a list of rights without metaphysical justification) impedes universal cooperation and resolution of factual ethical disputes, and thus it promotes societal fragmentation. The autonomous individual is divorced from the government for fear of its infringement on her/his rights and thus rights must be defended. The individual and government are also divorced from intermediary institutions including families, schools, and church communities as the rights language preferentially articulates rights the government must protect, ignoring or at least inappropriately deemphasizing the role of other institutions in the debate (page 105).593 Thus in place of moral dialogue and a common appeal to a justifiable shared standard, the universal rights paradigm devolves often into international incommensurable fights. Without theoretical (i.e. philosophical and particularly metaphysical) justification, there is nothing from within this system of universal rights which prevents a blogger for instance from distributing hate speech about racial or religious minorities because the blogger can assert doing so expresses her/his ‘right’ to free speech (without having to defend how competing claims and correct exercise of ‘rights’ can be resolved and identified, respectively, even by appealing to the standard of individual autonomy up to the limit of harming others). In the absence of Thomistic-Aristotelianism, MacIntyre tracks the historical trajectory of modern liberal states in which there is rampant internal division in the absence of a common objective moral standard. Sobering reminders of the resulting societal collapse of trust and just relationships include the violent polemics in the 2016 Brexit, the 2016 American and 2017 French presidential elections, and such regional examples as the murder of American Indian Srinivas Kuchibhotla (1985-2017 A.D.) by American Adam Purington (1966-present) after yelling at him to “get out of my country.”594 For MacIntyre, the universal rights paradigm cannot be 593

Ibid. BERMAN, Mark, “FBI investigating shooting of two Indian men in Kansas as a hate crime,” Washington Post, February 28, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/28/fbi-investigatingshooting-of-two-indian-men-in-kansas-as-a-hate-crime/?utm_term=.452b19eb5916.

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salvaged from its liberal tradition, and even the usage of its language such as by Maritain undermines true progress in peaceful international and individual relations by implicitly accepting a diminution or even denial of humanity’s social nature and the related virtue of justice guarding the common good and thus each individual’s ultimate end (page 109).595 In place of the supposed futile and failed social contract-imbued universal rights system, MacIntyre proposes instead to resurrect rational debate with a concrete structure applying Thomistic-Aristotelianism. There are only two options for modern man to achieve the aim of global peace according to MacIntyre, as intended by the UN’s Charter and the world’s different religious and philosophical belief systems: accept (a) the social contract reduction of natural law to popular concepts and values, or (b) the moral convergence of pluralistic belief systems by natural law. Given the failures of (a), MacIntyre proposes (b) with its primary champion of Thomistic-Aristotelianism so justice can give way to peace for the global human community, with both concepts ordered toward its increasingly clear and defensible formulation via a universal comprehensive conception of the good applied in the concrete situations and ethical debates of our current societies. This is done in three steps. (1) A defensible natural law (and the subsequently understand teleology-based conception of justice) is first made incarnate or concrete within “institutionalized social relationships within which it becomes visible” (page 110).596 (2) Second, societal goods are invoked to settle ethical disagreements by articulating them “in concrete terms at the level of practice” (page 110),597 and so the common good serves as the framework in which to resolve competing claims to the good among individuals, without sacrificing the objective good of any person. Following Aquinas and Lakato in contrast to Locke and Kuhn respectively, MacIntyre argues (3) finally for the universal conception of the good to serve as the ultimate truth standard metaphysically and epistemologically, and thus this tradition can critically assess new internal and external critiques and knowledge to further perfect its tradition and answer new ethical challenges. When a climber gains true knowledge of the mountain summit and the safest road of ascent to it by glimpsing this path, she/he can guide the rest of the party to it even if maps indicating a different road, previously thought to be correct, turns out not to be. Thus, this objective standard of truth, with its 595

MACINTYRE, Alasdair, “Community, law, and the idiom and rhetoric of rights.” 596 Ibid. 597 Ibid.

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progressive elucidation via shared practical reasoning in the concrete historical situations of a community, allows analogically the community to bypass the rocky impasses of epistemic crises and so progressively assimilate true insights into the ascent toward the good which is true and beautiful. MacIntyre, though sharing key elements with his fellow ThomisticAristotelian, Maritain, moves further from him by more closely following Aristotle and Aquinas’ conception of justice articulated as the prioritization of duties over rights, the common good over the individual, virtue over unlimited freedom, selfless service to the community over self-serving ends. And thus their philosophies move away from Maritain’s attempt to converse with the liberal social contract tradition (sharing its premise that there are absolute rights which exist independent of the common good and society that are derivative from the primacy of existence as a rationale human agent). MacIntyre further distances himself from Maritain by detailing the French philosopher’s divergence from Thomism advocating such specific requirements of the natural law as those indicated by the UDHR. MacIntyre follows Aquinas by noting ethical principles derived from natural law are necessarily general, abstract, and dynamic—the person is entrusted with the task of developing the virtue of prudence to elucidate in the concrete context of her/his society and ethical dilemmas what the natural law requires in a given situation to avoid evil and do good. Maritain on the other hand believed the natural law had to be adapted to provide concrete guidance toward an ethical minimalistic standard for the global human community to avoid another Holocaust and WWII. And yet critics argue Maritain captured a defensible element of Thomism that MacIntyre missed. It is not immanently clear how MacIntyre can consistently argue that there is a universal truth about the conception of the good, and yet morality derivative from this good can only be operationalized at the local level with the individual moral agents seeking to conform to this truth standard amid the historical and cultural elements of their society. Nor is it clear if MacIntyre’s argument about keeping ethics local can prevent a universal rights paradigm supported by natural law (or if his system would even be inconsistent with such a paradigm). For instance, the international human community is an increasingly concrete reality through the rising interconnectedness and influence of globalization on cultures, economies, and belief systems. The 1948 UDHR and the subsequent adoption of much of its enumerated rights by 157 national constitutions appears only to make

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explicitly incarnate the natural law (page 207).598 Why could this not be logically justified (with individual moral agents acting communally and locally with progressive practical reason to elucidate a common sense of moral absolutes by virtue of their common human nature) as a critical first step in establishing a global understanding of natural law-based virtue ethics in the specific historical modern context? Where MacIntyre and Maritain again converge is in Aquinas’ prioritization of what Maritain termed ‘integral human development’ consistent with each person’s ultimate end. The systems of both modern thinkers recognize liberalism’s replacement of a Thomistic-Aristotelian universal conception of the good (in which autonomous individual define their own ‘good’) inevitably devolves into self-seeking ends that breed greater distrust and violent forms of political, economic, and sexual manipulation. Take for example the first nation-wide experiments in the Enlightenment, the state constitutions of the US and Western Europe, and how they collectively are world leaders in modern human trafficking, 599 a $150 billion industry built literally on the backs of an estimated 21 million sex and labor trafficked victims;600 trafficking in these states only increases with a nation’s GDP (page 7).601 The Enlightenment played out in these modern liberal nations by seeing an increase in exploitation of the poor and weak by the rich and powerful not seeking the end of human fulfillment, but profit, prestige, and power. Accordingly, both Maritain and MacIntyre’s systems passionately argued against this trend by calling for “integral human development” prioritizing spiritual over material aspects of the person. Yes it is important to develop stable economies for a society to have adequate material needs, but not at the expense of trafficking humans which intentionally attempts to keep the 598

STACKHOUSE, Max, “Alasdair MacIntyre: Overview and evaluation,” Religious Studies Review 18 (July 18, 1992): 203–8. 599 DOVYDAITIS, Tiffany, “Human trafficking: The role of the health care provider,” Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health 55, no. 5 (September 2010): 462–67. 600 INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE, “Profits and poverty: The economics of forced labour. 2014. ISBN:” (United Nations, 2014), http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/--declaration/documents/publication/wcms_243391.pdf. 601 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME, “Global report on trafficking in persons” (United Nations, 2014), http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-andanalysis/glotip/GLOTIP_2014_full_report.pdf.

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victims subservient by inducing a sense of isolation, cleaving away the spiritual elements of their identity (as unique members of a larger human community)602 particularly from their families, friends, self, and their God(s). Maritain and MacIntyre’s approaches thus shift from the state focus of the liberal contractarians to follow Aquinas who emphasized the local area as the best leverage point to transform society into one that is just and peaceful, including for every person: “The basic political reality is not the State, but the body politic with its multifarious institutions, the multiples communities which it involves and the moral community which grows out of it (page 202).603 It thus falls principally not to the state but to families, school, religious, and other such ‘intermediary’ communities for this political task which is above all “a task of civilization and culture” (page 56)604 to advance the common good through “progress—material, of course, but also and principally moral and spiritual” (page 43).605 Therefore, MacIntyre can be essential to correcting the philosophical weaknesses in Maritain’s political philosophy and ethics by drawing more deeply on Thomism to reclaim profound insights from Maritain who advanced modern philosophy by refining the dialogue between ThomisticAristotelianism and post-Enlightenment philosophy. But though MacIntyre’s argument has been deeply influential in later 20th century philosophy, he has an apparent logical shortcoming to prove how it necessarily follows from the premise of universal rights rooted in the liberal tradition that we must thus accept the conclusion that universal rights must be abandoned as a productive paradigm—similar to the UN logical fallacy central to the early UDHR belief (expressed in the philosophical critique for which Maritain wrote the introduction) that the existence of philosophical divisions does not necessarily allow one to conclude that irreconcilable political divisions are inevitable unless the theoretical justifications behind those belief systems are ignored. It is precisely the divorce of universal rights from its prior philosophical tradition (particularly Thomistic-Aristotelianism that birthed them) in an attempt to effect political unification that allows philosophical unification to eventually exist by demonstrating its need. It has been shown above that the UN universal rights paradigm was built upon the UDHR (as what was eventually understood as a social contract) which 602

DESHPANDE, Neha A., NOUR, Nawal M., “Sex trafficking of women and girls,” Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology 6, no. 1 (2013): e22–27. 603 MARITAIN, Man and the state (L’homme et l'etat). 604 MARITAIN, The rights of man and natural law. 605 Ibid.

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itself was built upon the teleological Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law. The liberal social contract has no logical defense against why there cannot (and should not) be explicit adoption of natural law, even if it is not an immediate explicit adoption of its fullest articulation within ThomisticAristotelianism. In fact, the MacIntyre jujutsu technique demonstrating the practical and theoretical failures of the social contract elements of the UN universal rights paradigm demonstrates that natural law should be adopted to protect rights, equity, and freedom (since the social contract alone cannot do so). Thus the liberal social contractarians, Maritain, and MacIntyre may all be partly wrong but also partly right. As medicine continually seeks greater and greater clarity of biology and thus proper treatment of illness, so we are getting closer to (can we argue) the more defensibly substantive metaphysical and thus philosophical account of the good and its treatment for modern man’s divisions through a Thomistic personalist refinement of the UN universal rights social contract system applicable for the ethical challenge of AI-GNR. Let us now turn to Wojtyla to provide the final piece to this system. A true physician’s ignorance of the full, definitive account of cancer does not stop her/him from treating the person with cancer to the best of medicine’s current knowledge. Similarly, a true ethicist’s ignorance of the full, definitive account of philosophy does not stop her/him from treating ethical disputes with progressively clearer insight into the proper principles and means of applying them concretely for defensible shared conclusions. Plato’s cave must not necessarily be a sudden ascent into the dazzling light of the full knowledge of the good. Just a glimpse more of light with each step upwards can illuminate all of humanity gradually.

4.4. Wojtyla refinement of human rights, Maritain, and MacIntyre To summarize where we are thus far in this chapter, we have seen how Maritain saw true promise and insight in the liberal social contract tradition and thus sought to demonstrate to it how Thomistic personalism can defend a universal conception of the good, with the derivative virtue of justice protecting the rights and duties of each person via the common good. And this rights-duties account chiefly expressed in the UDHR and later by the UDBHR has a true teleological foundation which can politically outlast prior approaches by philosophically outperforming its rival social contract influence. MacIntyre’s historical argument from philosophical traditions allows us to understand how the post-Enlightenment liberal tradition

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collapses under the weight of its own logical fallacies and foundationless assumptions by attempting to construct universal maxims out of pure rationality, inevitably devolving into exploitative rule by the strong over the weak. Still further, MacIntyre’s thought can allow us to replace Maritain’s logical inconsistency with the primordial rights by adapting the Thomistic notion of individual rights first derivative from societal duties. And yet we are still lacking three critical components that defend how a modified UN rights-duties paradigm can be robustly defended by natural law (with its fullest articulation in Thomistic personalism), while still producing specific and concrete ethical conclusions at the global also rather than just at the local level, and still be theoretically justified by and intelligible to pluralistic belief systems. A MacIntyre modification on Maritain gives us the natural law defense of the paradigm. We will now turn to Wojtyla to determine if his thought can provide us the final two components of concrete conclusions and pluralistic consensus. Maritain took an analytical approach and MacIntyre a more historical approach to developing their own attempted advances to modern ThomisticAristotelianism. Wojtyla took a uniquely personalist one. Risking his life under Nazi-occupied Poland with its bloody Nietzschean ideological assault on human dignity, Wojtyla trained as a philosopher-priest before being elevated to a bishop and leading intellectual figure in the personalist defense of human dignity as a key political and ethical justifications in the modern world for Catholic Christian positions following the Second Vatican Council, with the first comprehensive personalist formulation in the 1965 Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae (Latin: ‘Dignity of the Human Person’) and Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes (Latin: ‘Joy and Hope’) (page 1).606 Wojtyla was intellectually convinced of ThomisticAristotelian metaphysics and thus epistemology, political philosophy, and ethics. Yet in the modern age dominated by liberal democracies reducing man materialistically to repeatable autonomous agents, he was just as profoundly convinced of the necessity to reclaim true insights from modern existential philosophy and psychology—to systematically analyze and formulate defensible descriptions how a person subjectively experiences objective truth predicated upon Aquinas’s realist metaphysics (page 1-2). 606

SANTOS, Gustavo, “Karol Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism and Kantian idealism: Parallel avenues of reason within the tension towards the ground of existence,” in Voegelin and Personalism (Annual American Political Science Association, Erin Voegelin Society, 2011), https://sites01.lsu.edu/faculty/voegelin/wp-content/uploads/sites/ 80/2015/09/Gustavo-Santos.pdf.

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Wojtyla therefore sought to reclaim the inner experience of the person in all its contextual richness and diversity across cultures and belief systems. If modern man had made herself/himself a philosophical amnestic orphan, disillusioned like a climber who refuses to believe a fellow climber that the way up the mountain could even be known, or that there is a mountain to climb in the first place, then Wojtyla would meet that lost climber where she/he was, in the shared experience of directional confusion and yet desire for the summit—and then elevate the person and her/his understanding gradually through experientially-verifiable truth-claims to knowledge of how to ascend the mountain with him. It is as if this Polish philosopher and teacher through his Thomistic-Aristotelian personalism came across modern man amid her/his altitude sickness cut off from her/his team and dying in the cold, reassured her/him through the experience of his arms encircling them from the snow flurry that he is real and so is his support, and then as the lost climber’s trust progresses and capacity to experience and thus know the truth of the directions up the slope, the older teacher guides the lost climber back to the path, back to the summit. Wojtyla thus built upon Thomistic realism with his phenomenology and anthropology to make this robust metaphysics intelligible to modern liberal man (page 66).607 Wojtyla’s approach built on MacIntyre and Maritain-like approaches in his 1995 UN general address in which he applied his unique relationshipfocused Thomistic-Aristotelian personalism for reflecting on the “history and role” of the UN as John Paul II, the then pope of the Catholic Church.608 Invoking Maritain’s language, Wojtyla reiterated how the Catholic Church with its “specifically spiritual [not principally material] mission” had “supported the ideals and goals of the United Nations Organization from the very beginning.” And unlike MacIntyre’s assertion that dialogue with the universal rights paradigm is futile, Wojtyla sided with Maritain that “the Church and the United Nations constantly find wide areas of cooperation” due to their shared “concern for the human family.” This common end of the family did not just frame his relational speech philosophically but also politically; he opened his address asserting that the UN represents in “some way…the whole family of peoples living on the face of the earth.” Family for Wojtyla was the most fundamental unit of political philosophy since it 607

SCHMITZ, Kenneth L, At the center of the human drama: The philosophical anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993). 608 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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is the most fundamental unit of society, the primary historical and societal context in which each person is meant to learn their identity as members of a human family and drawn internally within her/his own heart through virtue. And this virtue is epitomized by love via the common good to ultimate fulfillment with God (who is knowable as but not reducible to Love itself, the Creator and Father of the human family, and the ultimate conception of the good [but not reducible to the Supreme Good]) who is knowable through every belief system via the natural law and experienced through the lived reality of each person. Like Maritain, Wojtyla engaged the universal rights paradigm. Like MacIntyre, he transcended it. And unlike both, he elevated the it via the most commonly used concept and word from his entire address (“freedom”). Wojtyla shared Maritain’s conviction that the telos or end of every person is to be “a spiritual and free agent” (page 80).609 Like Aquinas, both men vigorously affirmed the purpose of each person is her/his fulfillment body and soul, with the fullest expression being each person in her/his spiritual union with the Platonic sun, the universal conception of the Supreme Good, namely God. And thus Wojtyla invoked a MacIntyre-like jujutsu in which he proposed his Thomistic-Aristotelian conception to achieve the end which the liberal social contract could not—true freedom for the individual. He structured his address therefore with the personalist framework of the family in which true freedom is first nourished, situating it historically by noting the “global acceleration of that quest for freedom,” and elevating it to the status of “one of the great dynamics of human history…one of the distinguishing marks of our time.”610 Wojtyla superseded MacIntyre’s insistence on local morality by noting this modern renewed thirst for freedom is pluralistic and global, connecting all cultures for its common desirability. He further invoked Maritain’s conception of rights in contrast to the liberalists by dually recognizing this affinity for freedom expresses itself as entreaties to take part in “social, political, and economic life” and is rooted in human dignity. Wojtyla thus positions his exposition of rightsduties, not as the individual seeking self-defined good through the requisite rights versus the state with duties to protect them amid the continual risk of it jeopardizing them, but as the natural law underscoring the importance of the person placing her/his freedom at service of the common good via 609

Maritain, Man and the state (L’homme et l'etat). WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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her/his societal duties to contribute to the shared good for the purpose of contributing to the common good (i.e. by participation in the “social, political, and the economic life”), as it therefore provides her/him the reflexive benefit safeguarding her/his rights rooted in her/his dignity to become fully realized persons in the process. Parents primarily seek the common good by first caring for their chief duty, their children’s nourishing, by virtue of their societal identities as parents. They primarily seek this virtuously by desiring the good of their children, and in the process receive the unintended but desired consequence of having their love reciprocated. Spouses similarly will the good of the other for the sake of the other as an end (not primarily so each may be loved by the other) as love is the only worthy and adequate response to the person, and so each spouse receives the love of the other. The critical key to this elevation of Wojtyla rights-duties system can be found in his earlier personalist work in marital love, Love and Responsibility. His unique personalist approach is evident even in the introduction in which he invited the reader to join him in the ‘confrontation’ of his theories seeking to capture the truth of the topic as the reader’s own experience of it for “Truth can only gain from such a confrontation” (page 10).611 Similar to MacIntyre, Wojtyla encouraged an objective standard of truth about the good to guide the progressive and communal pursuit of the good to increasingly correct the deficiencies in modern belief systems. But unlike MacIntyre and Maritain, Wojtyla encouraged a distinctive experiential, personalist element to this pursuit—to struggle in the body and soul, intellect and will, rational and emotional to subjectively assimilate the objective truth on any concrete moral question. Similar to the questions about methodological and theoretical justification on a global ethics taken up by Maritain for the UDHR, Wojtyla took up in Love and Responsibility the ethical questions and justifications on the Catholic Church’s arguments on marital love and contraception as detailed in Humanae Vitae (Latin: ‘On Human Life’). Wojtyla detailed how the debate centered between the teleological and deontological ethics on this controversial document in which the Catholic Church, in contrast to most religiously affiliated including nearly every other Christian denomination, reiterated its rejection of artificial contraception as violently harmful to the dignity of the human person by making the other person means to the other’s ends while risking or destroying new life.

611

WOJTYLA, Karol, Love and Responsibility. Revised edition. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993 {1961}.

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Wojtyla continued to set the stage for his philosophical system by making another bold personalist argument: “the only solutions which can expect to be fully accepted must be based on honest anthropology and on a profound insight into the act itself” (page 12). Similar to MacIntyre, Wojtyla recognized the need to seriously consider the concrete historical context of marital love and contraception. But unlike both Maritain and MacIntyre, Wojtyla attempted to not only logically defend the theoretical justification for his ethical conclusions, he also attempted to demonstrate their compatibility with a true understanding of the human person to arrive not solely at democratically supported maxims of conduct but also at a defensible and satisfying account of a “love worthy of the human person” by “affirming the person so as to enhance its dignity” in a fashion intelligible to pluralistic modern man (page 12).612 Here, Wojtyla went further than Maritain and MacIntyre by developing the logical conclusions and implications of Thomistic-Aristotelianism through a personalist methodology that can bridge the pluralism divides. Within the context of Thomistic natural law, Wojtyla fleshed out his theory within and through that law of the person who “becomes the object and subject of responsible love” through her/his action to act in accordance or rebellion to that love, writing for each person “the history of love or of its negation” (page 13).613 Rather than the above Thomists focusing on justice, Wojtyla saw love with its accompanying necessary correlative of freedom as the central reality of the person that was the interpretative key to modern ethical dilemma and thus ultimately of justice. Love unites the intellect and will within each person as a unique rational animal as she/he understands and wills the perceived good subsisting as another person present to a person, with this love and good as participating objects in their supreme source and summit of God which derive their desirability and goodness from God. Justice and peace are thus the external consequences of a society ordering persons who first embrace the ordering internal effects of this love. For Wojtyla, freedom is the necessary condition for this love, as the person actualizes the virtue of justice by honoring her/his duty to will the good of the other person, and so honor her/his right and end of total fulfillment in which she/he are truly free, united with a “God [who] is Love” itself (1 John 4:16).614 Thus he asserted love is “real…only when it reaches the highest point of affirmation of the dignity of both the object and of the subject” 612

Ibid. Ibid. 614 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 613

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(page 13).615 The lover freely loves the beloved by primarily putting into action her/his willing of the good of the other in conformity not with her/his own imagination of distortion of it, but rather with the universal and objective conception of the good. The lover gives this love without first demanding love from the beloved, as the Thomist understands her/his societal duty to care for the common good without first waiting or requiring to be served by it. And because of the unique nature of true love, it is freely returned from the beloved to the lover in unintended but treasured reciprocity that only strengthens the mutual indwelling of each person within each person, binding them together even more concretely. Thus this free love begins as free and responsible commitment to the good of the other and then becomes reciprocated before flourishing as communion of persons (with the template or source and summit for Wojtyla being the Eucharist Christ present in the Catholic Christian sacrament of Communion in which Jesus as the Bridegroom is given body and blood transubstantiated from the former species of the bread and wine to each person to be consumed and thus one with her/him collectively with the recipients as the Church, the Bride). Wojtyla summarized his sexual ethics by demonstrating how he through the language of love elevates the discussion of rights-duties and philosophy to the fullest level drawing on all human knowledge including the anthropological, philosophical (including experiential), and theological: “God has assigned as a duty to every man the dignity of every woman” (page 131).616 We belong to one another, and thus we can know what justice and peace are once we know what love, which reveals us to ourselves with the highest love being the second divine person of the trinity, Jesus who “fully reveals man to himself” (according to Wojtyla’s 1991 Redemptor Hominis argument). This is not a cold, distant, nor impersonal duty—it is a quiet, growing fire just underneath the surface of the intellect and will in the heart of each person that tames the emotional capacities with the rational capacities to affectionately treasure and selflessly serve the good of the other person. For Wojtyla, it was never simply about justice but also mercy—never simply the right thing but also the person being righteous. And like Socrates did for his day, Wojtyla proposed his personalist adaptation of ThomisticAristotelianism for modern man by inviting each person to honestly question if the constructs of vacuous modern belief systems acting as the cave shadows ring true and satisfying—and if not, then (like MacIntyre) he 615

WOJTYLA, Karol, Love and Responsibility. Revised edition. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993 {1961}. 616 Ibid.

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urged them to begin the ascent with him to where the sun’s light illuminates the true, the good, and the beautiful. Yet unlike Socrates and Maritain, Wojtyla proposed (and believed it was possible) for all peoples in Love and Responsibility and his 1995 UN address not simply an ethical minimal (though this is necessary in the beginning, the same way a mountain must be climbed by first beginning at the base) but also for a continual progression to the mountain top, to the universal conception of the good (not simply intellectually but also experientially and not just intellectually philosophical but also personally): “The most beautiful and stirring adventure that can happen to you is the personal meeting with Jesus, who is the only one who gives real meaning to our lives.”617 Wojtyla was profoundly convinced that the natural law was not the fullness of the truth, but a participation in it through a particular minimalistic or beginning modality, embedded in every human heart urging the right action; he was convinced philosophically and experientially that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful was the person of God the Son, Jesus Christ, who spoke to each person in the language he/she recognized in her/his historical moment and culture—whether that person would only know the good by the name of Ra the Sun God, Buddha, Allah, Jesus Christ, or rationality in secular humanism, Wojtyla believed God continued to call continually and efficaciously, continually advancing communally the global human family toward temporal peace and individually each person toward eternal union with Him if they allow Him to call her/him away from evil (as privation of the good) and toward the good. So why is the family the key to understanding Wojtyla’s philosophy? Because experientially the family is the primary context in which each person is meant to learn love and thus who she/he is as a person created by Love for love. And because intellectually (i.e. philosophically) each person achieves their end or fulfillment in perfect freedom when they are conformed to Love itself, which his Catholic Christian theology convinced him is a Triune God who exists as a relationship of three persons distinct but indivisible: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit). And this God calls to each person internally and naturally by virtue of each one’s common human nature to do good and avoid evil, speaking through each person’s unique historical context and culture and belief system to more and more perfectly do good by loving all persons. The 617

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to Representatives of the Italian Military” 1979, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1979/march/documents/hf_ jp-ii_spe_19790301_militari-italiani.html.

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common good thus is not an impersonal treasure chest in which citizens are compelled by the state to drop a percentage of their earnings into which are then divvied up by the state for each citizen. The common good is more like a dinner table, the convergence point of persons together who bring the fruits of their handiwork to share a meal together, to be sustained in their common desire for the good and thus the fulfillment of each person to one day perpetually share in the wedding feast of Heaven with the divine Bridegroom. The Christians, Muslims, and Jews can call it Heaven with God. The Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians can call it rich variations of Nirvana or TiƗn. Yet different names and different routes to this highest good does not necessarily justify a universal good does not exist—the same way as we earliest discussed how peoples speaking different languages and ascending the same mountain seek the same understanding and peak, and as they do, they come closer not only to the good but also to each other. And it is here that Wojtyla gently corrected Maritain and MacIntyre, completing more of what Aquinas began—explaining the subjective ‘why’ to the objective ‘what’: Why must I do the right thing required of me by natural law to do good and avoid evil? Because it objectively is right, and subjectively I experience the rightness or truth and goodness of that reality by the increasing freedom I experience as I grow in virtue, in commitment to the common good, by prioritizing my willing of the good of the persons closest to me—husband or wife and children and parents and siblings for lay persons and the religious community for clergy and religious brothers and sisters. For Wojtyla, it was not that Maritain went too far trying to engage liberal social contractarians, or that MacIntyre too strongly recognized the failure of the liberal tradition—it is that they did not go high enough. Wojtyla essentially advanced Thomistic Aristotelianism through his unique existential philosophy, psychology, and pastoral experienceinformed personalism, uniting the objective and subjective justifications for natural law along with philosophy and theology and indeed all of the fields of study through the interpretative and integral key of the human person understood through integral humanism expressed through the rich pluralism and multi-culturalism. And as in Love and Responsibility where he translated his personalist natural law paradigm into sexual ethics, he translated it into political philosophy and its related ethics (and applicable bioethics) for the UN in his final address to this universal body in 1995. And as he closed his introduction in his 1993 book, he closed his 1995 address that “by opening up this debate,” he earnestly wished and prayed it “bring the reader much satisfaction—and not merely intellectual

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satisfaction” (page 14).618 He thus fervently as a father encouraged his UN audience to not stop at the level of rights-duties but continue their ascent toward “[h]ope and trust” for international politics and philosophy can “never ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience,” warning that whatever “shortens the horizon of man’s aspiration to goodness…harms the cause of freedom.”619 Natural law is the starting point in this cause and quest, personally experienced and gradually understood, that then progress to rights-duties, which then in just and truly human communities allows the continued perfection of this metaphysical and anthropological trajectory into the completion of the human family at the summit of the Supreme Good. Wojtyla proposed the fullness of his Thomistic-Aristotelian understanding of this good that has freed him, that “As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ…[who] is for us God made man.” He thus quietly invited the UN, and by extension the global human family to “overcome our fear of the future” with this hope and trust, not by “the imposition of one social ‘model’” as with the liberal social contract model implicitly mandated in the modern liberal era through structural democratization and free market economic changes to developing nations post-WWII. Instead of remaining where Maritain believed the UN and human family was practically relegated, namely at the ethical minimal of universal rights tepidly guarding against the next Holocaust and WWII, Wojtyla argued the answer to this fear is a quietly natural law approach, embodied as a shared commitment to the dignity of each person to thus build a “civilization of love” with its ‘soul’ being “the culture of freedom” both individually and across nations, “lived in self-giving solidarity and responsibility.”620 Concluding his personalist adaptation of Thomistic-Aristotelian teleological natural law and virtue ethics, Wojtyla asserted this responsible love lived in the person’s immediate and global family through her/his “capacities for wisdom and virtue” and “with the help of God’s grace” empowers humanity to translate the “love worthy of the human person” (he outlined in his sexual ethics in Love and Responsibility to formulate his later political philosophy and broader ethics in his UN address) a “civilization worthy of the human person.” By elevating the conversation rather than denying its possibility like Maritain and MacIntyre in varying degrees, Wojtyla proposed a way 618

WOJTYLA, Karol, Love and Responsibility. Revised edition. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993 {1961}. 619 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 620 Ibid.

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forward with his personalist Thomistic-Aristotelianism developing Aquinas, Maritain, and MacIntyre to robustly and respectfully engage pluralistic belief systems in concrete ethical debates. This engagement thus allows a natural law conception of the good latent within each belief system to inform how justice with the common good argues for the defensible ethical conclusion. This discussion is not a list of rights nor a negation of the possibility of this dialogue. It is an elevation of the conversation and thus the possibility of a future for the UN that Wojtyla proposed, and indeed, for all of humanity in a way each person can gradually experience, internalize, and by which ultimately flourish.

4.5. Wojtylan personalist contract or communion So let us now distill down the structure of Wojtyla’s distinctive ThomisticAristotelian personalism through critically assessing its major political philosophy and ethics components in his 1995 address. His thesis is that the UN’s history demonstrates the experiential concrete evidence that it can only succeed in its mission for global peace if it facilitates the transition from politically united nations to a philosophically joined family of peoples, from fear and distrust to hope and trust, from liberal social contract alone to Thomistic personalist refinement of this contract, from rights-duties to duties-rights, from minimalistic justice to reciprocal love, and from a universal collection of nations to a civilization of love. Like MacIntyre, Wojtyla recognized the liberal fragmentation of societies globally under distrust and fear of the other persons and nations, for no substantive universal moral standard was left in the Enlightenment’s rejection of not only Thomistic-Aristotelianism but also of a (teleologic) metaphysicallygrounded universal objective conception of the good, of God(s) (revealing Himself to and intervening in the human family for its good), nor any metaphysical account or authoritative power higher than each person’s own rationality (which itself cannot be justified by any person to truly as her/his own nor what its proper functioning is). If a young child spies and steals his birthday gift of a baseball bat from his dad’s closet before the time he can give it to him, the bat does not ‘belong’ strictly speaking to the child, nor does the child necessarily know what the proper function of the bat is, for it remains first and foremost a gift of the father who will instruct the child how to use it when gifted. Wojtyla highlighted this insight in his 1995 address by noting “one of the great paradoxes” of modernity is that it began with the Enlightenment making a “self-confident assertion of his ‘coming of age’ and ‘autonomy’” but now enters the third millennia “fearful of himself, fearful of what he might be capable of, fearful for the future… about the

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very likelihood of a future” (Article 16).621 Wojtyla therefore built his argument about how to achieve the UN aim of peace by not simply removing the threat of war but also the liberal-intensified fear and distrust of not simply other nations but of the other person as well. Wojtyla began unlike MacIntyre by identifying points of common ground with the UN and its predominant liberal social contract structure and understanding of its universal rights paradigm. He praised the UDHR as “one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time” (Article 2).622 He then invited the UN to consider the universal moral outrage of the Holocaust and WWII which drove its creation and the growing desire for freedom fostered through the UN’s over half a centurylong defense of a commonly accepted list of human rights and duties. Wojtyla then made his personalist turn, breaking from Maritain and his primordial rights and from MacIntyre’s hesitation to engage the concept of rights, by arguing the universal quality of this moral impulse and growing desire for freedom and greater and more equitable participation in societal life by pluralistic peoples offers the “fundamental ‘key’” to understand the “inner structure” of this global movement toward freedom: it “confirms that there are indeed universal human rights, rooted in the nature of the person, rights which reflect the objective and inviolable demands of a universal moral law.” Wojtyla’s thought appears to adapt a Maritain-like premise by noting these rights are “not abstract points” but also a MacIntyre idea that such rights communicate to us concrete elements “about the actual life of every individual and of every social group.” Following Aquinas, Wojtyla confirmed the natural law entails an objective standard of truth about the good which thus informs our metaphysical and teleological understanding of the human person and thus her/his rights and duties as she/he exists as a societal member a human family meant to protect the common good. Yet he bypassed the logical inconsistency of MacIntyre (about restricting moral operation to the local level) by use of his phenomenological methodology by arguing for how each person subjectively experiences objective truth in the unique concrete historical reality of her/his culture that includes the local, state, and global levels. MacIntyre in Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry argues how moral discourse occurs from the standpoint of the persons in the discourse from within or between rival philosophical traditions: encyclopedia (i.e. Encyclopedia Britannica or the UDHR), 621 622

Ibid. Ibid.

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genealogic (i.e. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals), and traditional or Thomist (i.e. Catholic Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris).623 Though the concrete historical and cultural context of a person largely shapes moral discourse, Wojtyla’s system disagrees with MacIntyre’s that such context determines the conversation. Wojtyla followed Aquinas here much more closely than MacIntyre’s historical concentration and Maritain’s belief in irreconcilable rival philosophical traditions. For here, Wojtyla saw the natural law even more clearly as progressively informing each person and thus society precisely through her/his unique historical, cultural, and thus belief system context about what the good is and how this universal affinity toward it all the more manifests the possibility and necessity of the objective good to correct our shared understanding of it. This “moral logic which is built into human life” and “written on the human heart” does not divide peoples, like Maritain and MacIntyre’s systems may suggest, but actually “makes possible dialogue between individuals and peoples” (Article 3).624 Wojtyla then by analyzing pluralism strengthened his argument about the need for the UN to broaden its focus from avoiding mutual destruction to building peaceful civilizations, by zooming in from its liberal social contract structure to its Thomistic personalist foundation that orientates the structure to the above objective and universal conception of the good and thus allows the structure to flexibly engage diverse peoples (which it could not do without this recovery of its metaphysical foundation). He described this diversity as “forms of freedom” which can factually be recognized but not logically used to justify as the liberal project attempts that there is no “universality or intelligibility to the nature of man or to the human experience” (Article 3).625 Such a denial of the teleological understanding of human nature does not only have philosophical implications—it renders “the international politics of persuasion extremely difficult, if not impossible.” If there is no universal objective conception of the good, and thus no common human nature or natural law, then neither can there be lasting peace but only temporary armistice. North and South Korea are not at peace as of 2020. They are in a tense multi-decade military stand-off in which each continually prepares for war with the other. This is the reinforcing cycle of fearful distrust and exploitation facilitated by modern liberalism, a cycle that Wojtyla passionately pleaded with the UN to reverse. For if it wants a different political result (i.e. sustainable peace and justice), 623 MACINTYRE, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1994). 624 Ibid. 625 Ibid.

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then it needs a different philosophical solution than it has been using (i.e. the liberal social contract exclusively)—the UN needs to rediscover the natural law underpinning it. Wojtyla articulated this transition not primarily in philosophical and theoretical terms (though his entire personalism is a subtle, complex philosophical argument drawing from three millennia of thinkers) but through a personalist appeal to experience to first understand who the person is and thus what philosophy (and therefore which political approach) is worthy of her/him. He provides as an example the historical development of the communist collapse of the Soviet Union preceeded by the 1989 peaceful solidarity revolutions, attributing them to courageous peoples “inspired by a different, and ultimately more profound and powerful, vision” (Article 4).626 This vision is fundamentally a spiritual or immaterial understanding that transcended the modern liberal reduction of persons to repeatable and identical economic units of material production for the benefit of the rich and powerful. This vision was gradually experienced individually and communally in the common thirst for freedom among the peoples subjugated to the oppressive totalitarian communist Soviet rule. And thus this spiritual vision blossomed into an anthropological and philosophical vision of “man as a creature of intelligence and free will, immersed in a mystery which transcends his own being and endowed with the ability to reflect and the ability to choose—and thus capable of wisdom and virtue.” Unlike the liberal cold mechanistic construct of rationality as the sovereign good and authority manufacturing the modern just world, Wojtyla saw through this Thomistic personalism a global human family, organically growing together in a divine mystery which continually breathes life into the human mystery of freedom, intellect, desires, fears, sufferings, and ultimately of hope. Wojtyla echoed the Thomistic emphasis on the intellect and will (perfected by virtue and ordered toward the end of true wisdom or progressively possessing the objective good) through communicating in a personalist language accessible to a pluralistic modern audience by direct appeal to common human experience that can be rationally understood. He further developed his personalist argument by moving from this concept of the communicable and noncommunicable aspects of the person (sharing a common human nature and unique personality unfolding in her/his concrete historical and cultural context) to examining the social manifestation of that common human nature. Wojtyla argued that these 626

Ibid.

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peaceful revolutions had monumental success toppling totalitarian regimes because persons recognized their common dignity and thus their reciprocal rights and duties to each other which translated into their “experience of social solidarity” and thus “the moral core,…a beacon of hope” (Article 4).627 The intellectual and personal experience of the natural law pointing man back to her/his natural relationship with every person, which can give way to that rediscovery of reciprocal rights-duties and thus social solidarity, serves as the critical missing component of peace. Wojtyla reiterated his belief in the capacity of the UN to become a true ‘en-lightenment’ for the world (through this teleological rediscovery of its own foundation) by becoming “a light which can show the way to freedom, peace, and solidarity.” Wojtyla makes this MacIntyre-like jujutsu logical turn by not only recognizing the natural law latent with the UN (not only written into the UDHR/UDBHR structure but also immanently present through the common human nature of each person representing each nation within the UN) but also completing this account of peace as the product of responsible individual freedom (directed through solidarity to the common good which reflects and participates in the universal good) from which is born communal peace. Wojtyla delved deeper into pluralism’s implications for strengthening the recognition of natural law’s refinement of the liberal social contract, a recognition confirmed philosophically and experientially through the 20th century’s political reality. He reflected on the fluidity of modern pluralism which gives rise to a “new world horizon” via the growing interdependencies of peoples due to the anthropological factors of political economic globalization, mass media, and migration. He linked this “horizon of universality” toward the end of his address to the “transcendent” one of “man's aspiration to goodness” (Article 7).628 Pluralism which was used by liberal social contractarians to deny natural law only further strengthens it by showing the universal and concrete evidence for our common desires, hopes, and fears (individually contextualized differently for each person) which increasingly links humanity internationally (even outside the social contracts) with the exponential sophistication of technology and technology-driven economies (that in drive AI-GNR). This acceleration only heightens humanity’s ultimate desire for goodness, according to Wojtyla so there is not only the convergence of peoples but also of the present and future, the interface marked by a “horizon” of possibility—will man accept her/his common human nature, end, and thus duty to nourish 627 628

Ibid. Ibid.

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each other’s right to become fulfilled members of the same human family? Or will that future be increasingly compromised through fearful distrust of the many, manipulation of the weak by the strong, and ultimate extermination of peoples through technologies divorced from ethics including such history-altering discoveries as nuclear weapons (or for our purposes here, AI-GNR)? Wojtyla pointed with calm hope toward this horizon which illustrates “the powerful re-emergence of a certain ethnic and cultural consciousness, as it were an explosive need for identity and survival, a sort of counterweight to the tendency toward uniformity” (Article 7).629 Modern liberal states cannot ensure peace by mandating all peoples accept the liberal and thus reduced conception of the good which is only permitted to be secular and material. Developing African nations should not be, by extension of Wojtyla’s argument, be mandated through political or economic incentives or threats by the UN, World Bank, or other similar modern liberal creations to make structural changes to their economies and cultures such as reducing their very fertility rates and so violating their freedom (orientating them to their personal and communal good) particularly in cultures celebrating family and communal ties. This is the resurrected imperialism of the 17th and 18th century western European nations. The current populist rise in European, American, and other ‘developed’ modern liberal nations currently witness to a popular fear of losing one’s identity, which is really a cultural amnesia of the rich diversity of belief systems which modern liberalism is quickly replacing by consumerism, materialism, and thus nihilism. Man can desire the latest smart phone, while she/he silently suffers spiritual hunger pangs for true connection with the other person. And true to his integrated Thomistic-Aristotelian personalism, Wojtyla advocated for future pluralist dialogue on this dynamism of globalization versus nationalism “on the levels of anthropology, ethics and law.” Or more specifically, he urged a political philosophy and ethics which begin with an authentic anthropology of the person, not restricted solely to the secular texts of social contractarians and utilitarians but to the world’s full diverse ecosystem of belief systems. Wojtyla then pivoted his address to set the stage for his eventual argument about the proper end and scope of the UN and of what Maritain termed ‘intermediary communities’ like the Catholic Church and other world religions. He did this by making a national law-derivative argument that the “tension between the particular and the universal” is “immanent” for 629

Ibid.

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persons. Because of their common and thus universal human nature, persons “automatically feel that they are members of one great family” (Article 7).630 Yet there is concurrently a particular element for each person because of the “concrete historical conditioning of this same nature.” Wojtyla invokes a MacIntyre-like emphasis on the particular historical context of each person, but by arguing for it as a derivative property of a common human nature, he uses his personalist methodology to escape the logical challenges plaguing MacIntyre about how to account for the non-absolute quality of this historical conditions before the overarching objective reality of the good. Wojtyla continued by justifying a hierarchy of relationships with their associated rights and duties based on the observation of the “historical context” of each person which makes them “bound in a more intense way to particular human groups.” These groups or communities start with the family, go to the larger regional communities, and finally reach up to the “whole of their ethnic and cultural group” or “nation.” He emphasized the etymological roots of ‘nation’ from the Latin ‘nasci’ (‘to be born’) and ‘patria’ (‘fatherland/motherland’), indicating “the reality of the family” to account for the person’s first duty to her/his family, followed by the local community, and then the nation on a continuum of human relationships arising from a common human nature and shaped into the particularities with the historical and thus cultural context of this continuum. It is precisely the “vital tension” born “between these two poles” of universality and particularity that makes it “singularly fruitful” if correctly balanced. It is this continuum which further accounts for the necessity not only of solidarity with others (in a hierarchical fashion from proximal or more local to more distant) but also the intertwined concept drawn from Wojtyla’s Thomism and the Catholic social teaching of ‘subsidiarity.’ Wojtyla’s papal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903 A.D.), was the same Thomistic philosopher who published Aeterni Patris (Latin: ‘Eternal Father’), recognizing Thomistic-Aristotelianism as the Christian Catholicism’s influential philosophical and theological system. Leo produced the first extended description of the conception of subsidiarity in his 1891 A.D. encyclical Rerum Novarum (Latin: ‘Of Revolutionary Change’) while rejecting the two poles of atheist Marxism and unrestricted liberal capitalism emerging in his historical time when he argued for just labor (with explicit naming of ‘subsidiarity’ by Pope Pius XI [1857-1939 A.D.] in the 1931 Quadragesimo Anno).

630

Ibid.

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Nearly six decades before the UDHR, Leo proposed a pioneering Thomistic formulation of reciprocal rights and duties based on a metaphysical and epistemological teleological account of human dignity, and so he concurrently argued for human dignity as a central anchor of the Catholic social doctrine (page 1)631 as a forerunner to the 20th century rights treatises. Without advocating for a particular political system, Leo followed Aquinas (as Wojtyla over 100 years later would also) to stress that the state’s primary purpose is to nourish the common good within a distinctive natural law framework. The state cannot abuse its power by interfering with the fundamental derivative concept of this law, namely subsidiarity, except in extenuating circumstances for the common good. Leo developed this concept through a rejection of socialism by a hierarchical ordering of rights and duties through an ordering of human relationships. The state therefore cannot interfere in the proper functioning of the rights and duties of families and regional communities, except when these most basic levels of relational communities are unable or unwilling to provide for the needs of the persons within them.632 Wojtyla in his own 1991 A.D. encyclical, Centesimus Annus (Latin: ‘Hundredth Year’) published on the century anniversary of Rerum Novarum further expounded on this concept as integrally connected with solidarity as both concepts describe how the state should pursue its primary goal of the common good. Wojtyla emphasized that subsidiarity should be the state’s indirect ordering principle by “creating favorable [sic] conditions for the free exercise of economic activity” and solidarity should be its direct principle for the state “defending the weakest” by enforcing necessary “limits on the autonomy” of authorities includes employers to prevent abuse while concurrently providing “the necessary minimum support for the unemployed” (Article 15).633 Four years later before the UN, these integral concepts were again deployed by the same Wojtyla who completed his second doctorate in the same Thomistic graduate school in Rome created by Leo in 1879 A.D., the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, two

631

SANTOS, Gustavo, “Karol Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism and Kantian idealism: Parallel avenues of reason within the tension towards the ground of existence.” 632 LANARI, Barbara, “Rerum Novarum and seven principles of Catholic social doctrine,” The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, December 2009. 633 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Centesimus Annus” (Vatican, 1991), http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html.

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months after Leo published Aterni Patris. Before the UN in 1995, Wojtyla interestingly highlighted solidarity not at the national level but at the individual. He noted how it was not the Soviet Union’s main rival, the US, which brought this communist superpower down. It was its people. United peacefully but still concretely by “social solidarity,” the people organized at the family and regional community level with the “beacon of hope” to successfully ensure the return of selfdetermination back to the person level through the collapse of this totalitarian regime (Article 4).634 When the Soviet state failed in its duty of subsidiarity to create the favorable political and economic conditions for persons to thrive, the people did, first at the family and then at the local level through solidarity under oppressive conditions. Wojtyla built on this logical momentum to cap off his discussion of the creative tension between universality and particularity (and the personal and the national levels) by mapping these poles back to rights and duties. He argued that the rights of a nation express particularity while its duties express universality (Article 8).635 As persons should live in solidarity at the local level, so should the nations (constituted by such persons) do in relation to other nations. The primary national duty according to Wojtyla was “living in a spirit of peace, respect and solidarity with other nations.” Solidarity among the world’s states, born of a recognition of the common duty of each to the common good and the proper exercise of that duty through subsidiarity and solidarity to its people, thus “strengthens the unity of all mankind” through a “fruitful ‘exchange of gifts’” by contributing to the just ordering of the global human community or the supra-national community. Reciprocity is thus not only a natural element of the proper functioning of rights and duties; it is also the central unifying dynamic of the particular and the universal in addition to subsidiarity and solidarity (similar to Wojtyla’s dynamic gift of self between spouses in his sexual ethics). And so we finally have arrived at the full expression of Wojtyla’s structure and function of his Thomistic-Aristotelian personalism. In physico-chemistry-informed biology, structure determines function and function determines structures in an evolving process of the organism becoming increasingly adept inhabiting an ecological niche. So in Wojtyla’s theologically informed philosophy, the structure is teleology and the function is reciprocity ordered according to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity directing the continual flow of 634

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 635 Ibid.

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love back and forth among persons at the individual level and among intermediary organizations and states at the communal level. Wojtyla strengthened this formulation of the principles governing the function of his system by exploring the inner structure of pluralism itself, the existence of which he used to first support his argument for the necessity and appropriateness for natural law particularly over the sole of the social contract. He noted how the “fundamental commonality” among persons and peoples underlying their plurality is explained by the telos embedded within a common human nature (Article 9).636 He asserted that there is multiculturalism because there are multiples paths before the “question of the meaning of personal existence” but all moving in a similar direction. This recognition beginning with the person at the local level is the implied respect for all cultures and nations: Every culture is an effort to ponder the mystery of the world and in particular of the human person: it is a way of giving expression to the transcendent dimension of human life. The heart of every culture is its approach to the greatest of all mysteries: the mystery of God.

Pluralism exists precisely because of (not in contrast to) the natural law— the hunger within each person gives rise to the local community amid other such communities constitute a teleological culture which in turn gives rise to a rich chorus of voices searching to articulate this fundamental question of ‘personal existence.’ The objective conception of the good safeguards the vital necessity of respecting the different paths and perspectives up this intellectual and experiential mountain toward the objective vision within this natural law structure grounded solidly in a defensible metaphysics. The liberal social contract by its very structure must inevitably seek to violently suppress and replace every non-liberal belief system with its supposedly neutral, non-absolute, subjective conception of the good (that itself makes an objective assertion that there is no objective conception outside itself and thus every objective conception belongs to a hostile belief system that must be excluded from political life). The second implication of Wojtyla’s teleological analysis of pluralism’s inner structure is its integral search for truth (the search for what the good actually is that unites peoples through their diverse belief systems). Unlike the liberal social contract, Wojtyla’s natural law system does not separate philosophical from experiential from theological truth. Truth is not fragmented; it is one in various gradients and perspectives. Thus Wojtyla 636

Ibid.

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accordingly did not shy from advocating for instance that further analysis on the tension between universality and particularity should be conducted “on the levels of anthropology, ethics and law” (Article 7).637 Unlike Descartes, Locke, and Rawls, Wojtyla believed like Ulysses that man should be emboldened rather than terrified by the unknown—ultimately by the “greatest of all mysteries: the mystery of God” (Article 9).638 Wojtyla could engage anthropology, philosophy, law, theology, and science for the same reason he could likewise engage Islam, Judaism, secular atheism, and so on—for he sought to emulate the first pope who was personally called by Jesus Christ to “go out to all nations” and embrace all peoples, gently seeking to “propose respectfully” (Article 17) a more complete and comprehensive conception of the objective good, revealed consistently throughout history while uniquely within each person’s belief system and culture. The third implication of Wojtyla’s treatment of pluralism’s inner structure is that the good is an active not a passive concept since it is relational, dynamic, and reciprocal love. According to Wojtyla, the “greatest of all mysteries” (Article 9) does not perch at the top of the metaphysical mountain indifferently waiting for man to ascend to it—the good goes down to reach man. The philosopher-king likewise goes down the mountain to help the climbers as pilgrims climbing together. In a homily during the same American trip in which he delivered the UN address, Wojtyla enthusiastically proposed “Jesus Christ is the answer to the question posed by every human life.”639 This Truth made incarnate comes down to dwell with the people seeking the Supreme Good. And likewise human dignity is not a passive concept or some inference of it that liberal social contractarians can use to justify rights; it is a participatory reflection of the God in whose image the person is created and as such dynamically draws the person back to the source and summit of its own mystery. The final implication of Wojtyla’s structural teleological assessment of pluralism is that the reason for respecting it illuminates the rationale for “the cornerstones of the structure of human rights and the foundation of every truly free society” (Article 10)”, namely, “freedom of religion and freedom of conscience”640 (in harmony with Roosevelt’s four freedoms that featured a similar emphasis). And similar to Maritain, Wojtyla identified this 637

Ibid. Ibid. 639 Ibid. 640 Ibid. 638

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freedom as the most critical right and so orders and justifies all human rights and duties toward and by the universal conception of the good that draws each person through the highest and most metaphysical formulations of their beliefs and convictions. This objective good reveals itself as it were to every person as the natural law written on the heart of each within the desire to know the ultimate mystery, the most complete formulation of it, what Wojtyla termed the “mystery of God” (Article 9). Pluralistic dialogue with a common moral language thus can facilitate identification of elements of truth in varying belief systems to enable ultimately moral convergence (not relativism or syncretism). If man is not free to realize her/his dignity and so pursue the good in accordance with this dignity which beckons forward on this way of truth searching for fulfillment, then she/he cannot grow in personal virtue and communal solidarity. And thus without this highest freedom (to search for the good including its in its highest form that includes the cultural [as the communal manifestation of integral humanism] and theological dimensions of the person), then cultures and nations cannot grow in commitment and proximity to the common good through subsidiarity and solidarity for its members and citizens to create and nourish the conditions necessary for the fulfillment of each person to be conformed to this good (as a gifted violinist for instance becomes an increasingly ‘good’ violinist as she/he is conformed to the standard for a good violinist). Where the liberal social contract superficially and theoretically respects pluralism to prevent war among citizens (and then gradually—or not so quietly—in practice removes non-liberal systems), Wojtyla’s personalist natural law in contrast respects different cultures and precisely needs them to be different “for each community's attempt to answer the question of human life” (Article 10).641 We all share this question according to Wojtyla for we all are one human family, sharing a common nature, end, and intended destiny which no liberal body of thinkers can expel in favor of their own shifting versions of the answers. And so unlike the social contract judging and thus excluding cultures and belief systems based upon its own artificially constructed liberal standard, Wojtyla’s natural law believes “[t]he truth about man is the unchangeable standard by which all cultures are judged; but every culture has something to teach us about one or other dimension of that complex truth.” And so pluralism only points to the failure of the social contract which cannot account for it, and thus reinforces the defensibility for Wojtyla’s natural law as “respectful dialogue” among multicultural and diverse belief systems as the transformative “source of a deeper understanding of the mystery of human existence.” Though having 641

Ibid.

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shared MacIntyre’s belief in the progressive elucidation of the good by the objective standard of truth through assimilating new and true knowledge, Wojtyla still diverged from him and Maritain’s insistence on the irreconcilability of diverse belief systems to argue that it is precisely dialogue amid these belief systems that accelerates pluralistic human community’s shared ascent of the metaphysical mountain toward the good, guided by a concrete and objective conception of the good. Wojtyla used freedom to bridge pluralism and rights, and then applied a similar teleological investigation into the structure of freedom. For Wojtyla, nations cannot be free unless they protect the most basic freedoms for their peoples—that of religion and conscience which makes the communal and personal pursuit of truth possible. It is truth of the good which orders nations and each person toward the end which alone can make them just and thus peaceful, namely, conforming to and converging on the good. Rights and duties are the necessary implications of this teleological ordering, this structure whose animating spirit is freedom, chiefly expressed and realized in its fullness when the highest good is realized for each person, the flourishing of each person through union with the good. Diverse cultures and their belief systems arise in the concrete historical context of each person and peoples to pursue this good. Therefore, Wojtyla moved from pluralism to freedom to more deeply understand rights predicated upon this teleological ordering. He argued freedom is “the measure of man's dignity and greatness” (Article 12),642 providing an indispensable key for determining the path for each person and nation toward the good and thus the degree to which both a person and nation can be just and peaceful. So as Wojtyla developed his Thomistic personalism for the basic unit of society in Love and Responsibility, he applied his unique development on Thomism to societies via his unique political philosophy and ethics in this 1995 UN address using freedom as the intellectual and experiential bridge. To understand the “responsible use of freedom,” Wojtyla invited his audience to delve deeper into its “moral structure” which is nothing other than “the inner architecture of the culture of freedom” (Article 12).643 Freedom and morality (along with rights and duties) recognizing the common human nature of the other and responding with love are inseparable and reciprocal realities, bound together by the objective truth of what the universal good is and known progressively through the natural law and growth in virtue within persons and nations. In Love and Responsibility, 642 643

Ibid. Ibid.

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Wojtyla argued teleologically from the metaphysical and epistemological reality of the universal good to the premise that there is a common human dignity and nature, from which derives freedom and the universal call to order it via virtue toward love for the other person, willing the other’s good above one’s own. And this reciprocal interplay between persons gives rise to love progressively until it is perfected in the telos of the person (i.e. as the person loves she/he is increasingly conformed to the Supreme Good or Highest Love, God metaphysically and theologically). Thus in his UN address, Wojtyla sought to elevate his audience’s understanding of freedom from the minimalistic liberal or social contract vision of the absence of external coercion as in political tyranny or the liberal license to have full autonomy restricted only by changing universal maxims or principles. He “respectively propose[d]” a higher vision informed by natural law intellectually and experientially, allowing each person to comprehend freedom’s “inner ‘logic’” and thus its noble higher formulation: “freedom is ordered to the truth, and is fulfilled in man's quest for truth and in man’s living in the truth” (Article 12).644 As climbers journeying through the difficult mountain ascent, their joy and spirits growing with their altitude as they see more and more of the horizon, so do persons and nations seeking the objective truth together as they converge together in their unique historical and cultural context. When liberalism formulated its own conception of freedom separate from objective truth (articulated and defended particularly classically in Aristotle’s tradition through Aquinas with metaphysics, epistemology, and personalist analysis of human experience of these disciplines), it devolved into “license” individually and “caprice” societally for the powerful. Wojtyla defended this argument through humanity’s shared experience of the political and economic liberal products of national and economic utilitarianism. He observed the historical reality of rich rations getting richer by making poor nations poorer, particularly with the developed versus developing nations following WWII. This arrangement is supposedly justified on the liberal universal principle of maximizing the greatest ‘good’ for the greatest number by negating the inviolable dignity of each person. He thus advocated a nuanced position between liberalism and teleology (that did not compromise teleology nor prove itself unintelligible to liberalism’s primary objectives to defend a pluralistic conception of justice and individual rights). As his predecessor did a century prior in Rerum Novarum between the liberal economic creations of Marxism and 644

Ibid.

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unrestrained free capitalism, Wojtyla in his 1995 UN address did for the liberal political creations of the social contract-based democratic states and more communitarian nations with its worst excesses in totalitarian nations. He rejected this false dichotomy by meeting liberal thinkers (in their limited conception of freedom, rights, and peace) and then inviting them to elevating their vision to intellectually defensible and experientially verified conceptions of these principles resting solidly on a natural law foundation. Wojtyla therefore argued that the developing nations manipulated by the stronger modern liberal states should have their “unjust…forms of government [replaced] with participatory and democratic ones,” while being empowered to “renounce strictly utilitarian approaches and develop new approaches inspired by greater justice and solidarity.” Yet how can this transition occur both for developed and developing nations? To understand the answer according to Wojtyla, we need to first better understand the proper question. The distinction between developed and developing, which is so popularly used today that it appears to be true de facto, interestingly has its historical roots in the modern liberal thought imposing an ideological worldview on post-WWII humanity, reducing and dividing all peoples materialistically, into ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations.645 The categorization was popularized by the American President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972 A.D.) in his inaugural address proclaiming the four-point plan of the US plan for post-WWII global instability: First we will continue to give unfaltering support to the United Nations and related agencies, and we will continue to search for ways to strengthen their authority and increase their effectiveness…Second, we will continue our programs for world economic recovery…Third, we will strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression…Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.646

The US including through its UN influence would create a new political economic world order in which its modern liberal understanding of democracy, human rights, and technology driven-linear development would transform materially developing nations into developed nations so they 645

SACHS, Wolfgang, The development dictionary: A guide to knowledge as power (London, UK: Zed Books, 1992). 646 TRUMAN, Harry S, “Inaugural address” n.d., Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, Independence, MO, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/50yr_archive/inagural20jan1949.htm.

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could become American and UN allies ensuring international peace. Undoubtedly the 60 years following this 1949 address has been an unprecedented period without global armed conflict that has witnessed a remarkable rise in national recognition of human rights. Yet this peaceful revolution is sputtering out as its liberal philosophical core is beginning to crumble under the weight of its own political creations. Populist movements are increasingly questioning and undermining the liberal institutions that birthed them, while communist China exerts greater global influence eclipsing an increasing number of Western liberal democracies. The American president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865 A.D.), credited as one of the nation’s greatest presidents for preserving the union amid the Civil War, questioned if any nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could “long endure.”647 His question echoed by Wojtyla assumes greater urgency—how much longer can this global stability persist if international wealth is increasingly centralized, leaving the substanceless liberal contract defended chiefly by the US with its UN and ‘developed’ and allied ‘developing’ nations silent before the questions of how to stop human rights abuses by powerful parties who at will redefine rights and their proper exercise. For true development for nations toward lasting peace, and thus from the liberal social contract to the personalist natural law, a different development route must be taken in which truth is not subjective and the heights of humanity is more than simply material. Wojtyla proposed an alternative narrative for the global political economy and the community of nations, a new route through “an ethic of solidarity” (Article 13).648 This solidarity taps the “the true source of the wealth of nations.” It is not what liberal thinkers such as Adam Smith in his 1776 The Wealth of Nations describe as competition driven by self-interest. Rather, it is “the creativity which is a distinguishing mark of the human person.” Similar to his elevation of freedom, Wojtyla’s definition of this creativity elevates justice and peace from minimalistic liberal formulations. He hinted at this definition in his 1961 play, The Jeweler’s Shop, in which the young Christopher answers the question about how can love be known to be objectively good (and not simply some subjective impulse or sensual desire 647

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Homily of His Holiness John Paul II,” (Apostolic journey to the United States of America, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD, October 8, 1995), https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/ documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html. 648 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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for animalistic physical intimacy with another human being before moving on to another)—“Why does one love at all? What do I love you for, Monica?... Man must then think differently, must leave cold deliberations— and in that ‘hot thinking’ one question is important: Is it creative?”649 Wojtyla clarified the definition of this creativity in Love and Responsibility: Love commits to freedom and imbues it with that to which the will is naturally attracted—goodness…Man longs for love more than for freedom—freedom that is the means and love the end… From the desire for the ‘unlimited’ good of another ‘I’ springs the whole creative drive of true love — the drive to endow beloved persons with the good, to make them happy…To desire ‘unlimited’ good for another person is really to desire God for that person (age 135-138).650

Contrast this with the controversial topic increasingly demonstrated to be a public health crisis—pornography.651 This practice has grown to epidemic levels, with 24 studies and counting since 2011 up to 2017 demonstrating pornography can physically damage brains like cocaine or other addictive objects,652 compatible with findings from a meta-analysis of 22 studies across 7 nations that it also is associated with increased sexual aggression including rape.653 Similar to the earlier anthropological analysis of the preteradaptive gifts, Wojtyla rejected the liberal conception that man makes her/his own truth and universe, including if she/he wants to revert to ape behavior and seek only to eat, sleep, force sex, then die. Drawing on his Thomistic personalism, Wojtyla argued that true love rather does not use another body, but desires the good of the other person, and 649

WOJTYLA, Karol, The jeweler’s shop: A meditation on the sacrament of matrimony passing on occasion into a drama, First edition (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1992). 650 WOJTYLA, Karol, Love and Responsibility. Revised edition. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993 {1961}. 651 HALVERSON, Haley, “The anti-porn movement is growing: The public is just catching up,” Washington Post, May 27, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/05/27/the-anti-pornmovement-is-growing-the-public-is-just-catching-up/. 652 KÜHN, Simone, GALLINAT, Jürgen, “Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn,” JAMA Psychiatry 71, no. 7 (July 1, 2014): 827–34. 653 WRIGHT, Paul J., TOKUNAGA, Robert S., KRAUS, Ashley, “A meta-analysis of pornography consumption and actual acts of sexual aggression in general population studies,” The Journal of Communication 66, no. 1 (February 1, 2016): 183–205.

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therefore ‘is of its very nature creative and constructive’ (page 93), giving life at the family level through children and increased intimacy and at the societal level through constructive efforts to foster the freedom and flourishing for people's equitably. From the Indian Catholic Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997 A.D.) to the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948 A.D.) (page 258), their love respectively for Jesus Christ and one’s fellow man in accordance with the dharma or duties654 gave a quiet fertility to their societal efforts to alleviate other’s sufferings, unleashing global movements of solidarity accordingly for others to follow their way of life. Therefore for Wojtyla who understood the fullness of the good to be God, the Father and Creator, proposed for the UN that this creativity replace the liberal exploitation of weaker nations by the stronger and so serve as ‘the true source of the wealth of nations.’ Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalist conception of love was the key to transforming political philosophy and ethics as Plato’s conception of the philosopher-king served to describe how to justly rule the person and the polis through adherence to justice. Wojtyla synthesized these teleological analyses of the structure and purpose of freedom, rights, and pluralism to propose his comprehensive Thomistic personalist refinement of the UN’s social contract formulated rights-duties belief system according to the Thomistic roots in the UDHR and the appeal to the common humanity and experience of peoples constituting the UN. While avoiding explicitly mentioning “liberal,” “social contract,” “ThomisticAristotelianism,” and “natural law,” Wojtyla praised the progress of the UN, and urged it onward to its political goal of peace by quietly providing philosophical conceptual improvements to its crumbling foundation. He began the summary exposition of his comprehensive system by noting the political effectiveness of the UN “depends on the international culture and ethic which it supports and expresses” (Article 14).655 This “culture of freedom” and “ethic of solidarity” are the necessities of peace, the integrated humanist bridge to transport the UN from “the cold status of an administrative institution” to “a moral center [sic],” from distrustful fear to hopeful trust, from exploitation of the weak to mutual awareness of common humanity, from an organizational to organic community, from politically united nations to a morally bound “family of nations.” Based on a common human nature, origin, and end, this “family of nations” can unite the world’s peoples by a stronger, deeper, and more enduring bond of trust and resultant 654

FLOOD, Gavin D, An introduction to Hinduism, 1st US - 1st Printing edition (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 655 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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shared defense of the freedom and fulfillment of each person—a bond of love manifesting and completing the natural law and so serving “even before law itself, the very fabric of relations between peoples.” For Wojtyla, the family is the domestic church, and so by him calling the world’s states to become a “family of nations,” he urged a more intimate and comprehensive understanding of the objective good by this family, which can thus be bound at the most fundamental level in common love of God who is the Supreme Good who thus draws each member of that family through love, allowing personal relationships at the individual and state level to move from governance by procedural liberal superficial justice to personalist liberating substantive love. If the UN makes this philosophical and experiential transition, Wojtyla passionately proposed it will achieve its “historic, even momentous, task of promoting this qualitative leap in international life.” But it can only do so by moving from a reactive to also proactive community in which conflicts are not just resolved, they are prevented through nourishing the “values, attitudes and concrete initiatives of solidarity.” These values surge forth as an organic, fruitful, and fertile expression of the virtue ethics of solidarity fostered in a personalist natural law, knowable intellectually in the natural movement to do good and avoid evil and knowable experientially in how each person encounters the objective truth of the good in her/his daily life. And so Wojtyla built on Aquinas and Maritain and MacIntyre’s proposed developments on Aquinas’s system with his own personalism to demonstrate how the subjectively experienced freedom so desired by the liberal thinkers can only be realized by disciplined commitment of the will to the objective truth of the good defining how that freedom is accessible. The climber cannot tell the mountain how it can be climbed—but only the other way around. This humble transition from “existence with” to “existence for” others is the critical turn all of humanity inherently longs for and requires if the unending wars driven by the primitive instincts of violence, exploitation, and deceit finally will cease. It is this critical epistemic turn to undo that of Descartes, the personalist awakening from the suicidal slumber of Nietzschean nihilism, and the moral evolution from warring beast to loving person that humanity must reach if there is to be a fourth millennia. And so as in Love and Responsibility, Wojtyla entreated his UN audience to take this risk of love to usher in a new era of “a fruitful exchange of gifts, primarily for the good of the weaker nations but even so, a clear harbinger of greater good for everyone” (Article 14). Wojtyla concluded his address by beseeching his audience to seek this creative power of love as the animating force of freedom called to its

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fulfillment in this teleological structure of universal rights-duties, functioning through subsidiarity and solidarity. For only in replacing its dead and decaying failed liberal conception of freedom, rights, and peace with a natural law conception (with the map of its fullest defense in Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism, facilitating the “fruitful exchange” of diverse cultures and belief systems) can the UN regain its firm political and philosophical footing, thus resuming its metaphysical ascent toward peace made possible through growing knowledge of and intimacy with the universal good. According to Wojtyla, this is the “the high road which must be followed to the end,” inviting and inspiring every person and peoples by appealing to our shared desire for the mountaintop, our “highest aspirations for good” uniting us as one human family. And the hope and trust coming from our brothers and sisters climbing besides us gives us the courage to take the “the risk of freedom....the risk of solidarity—and thus the risk of peace” to build a “civilization of love” (Article 18) on that mountaintop. The higher we climb out of the cloud cover, the more clearly we see how this “[h]ope and trust are the premise of responsible activity” of our freedom and thus love, primarily and first nourished according to a shared national defense of that first right of “conscience where ‘man is alone with God’ (Gaudium et Spes, 16)”, alone with the good, and “thus perceives that he is not alone amid the enigmas of existence, for he is surrounded by the love of the Creator!” embodied in creation and his human family (Article 16). In a MacIntyre-like jujutsu logical move, Wojtyla gently challenges the UN if it desires peace, it must desire justice, and if it wants justice, it must admit it needs to know what that is, which its liberal social contract roots alone cannot provide it. The social contract conception of justice reduces it to nothing other than emotivism assertions, grounded not in logic but in democratic consensus which can and does change any moment. Hearkening to this in the same American homily noted above, Wojtyla quoted Lincoln to press this point further, asking if any nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could “long endure”656 without an underlying metaphysical foundation with a comprehensive and integral humanism anchoring it amid the inevitable storms that will blow past it.

656

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Homily of His Holiness John Paul II,” (Apostolic journey to the United States of America, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD, October 8, 1995), https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/docu ments/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html.

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Much more dangerous than even such a calamitous bloody conflict as the Civil War, Wojtyla argued that “[d]emocracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and human community” (Article 7).657 He developed this argument by noting the fundamental question posed to every democratic state is how should citizens live together? If a society adheres to the liberal social contract, this question is answered eventually and solely in tyrannical rule of the rich and powerful over the poorer and weaker (as the might of the powerful allows them to exert their self-defined truths over the self-definitions feebly claimed by the weaker). He observed that strict social contract adherence requires the exclusion from modern debate of natural law formulated in Christian “[b]iblical wisdom” (as shared by the Muslim and Jewish scriptures also) central to the liberal AND natural law-informed founding fathers. Wojtyla pressed the argument further, questioning would this exclusion not mean “America’s founding documents [would] no longer have any defining content, but are only the formal dressing of changing opinion?” Jewish-born German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856 A.D.) expressed the sobering implication of this realization: “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen” (German: ‘Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings’ [Heinrich Heine, Almansor: A Tragedy {1823 A.D.}, page 142]).658 Lincoln was ultimately assassinated on Good Friday in 1865 A.D. for his belief in the equality of African Americans with White Americans,659 followed 100 years later by the assassination of African American civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968 A.D.) after his famous speech that “I’ve been to the mountaintop…I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” (page 155).660 The attempted murder of rivaling ideals has exhaustingly throughout history been followed by the exclusion and execution of the people cradling such ideas. For the superficial without the substance, as in a liberal democratic enumeration of human rights justified only by majority consensus, is propaganda not philosophy.

657

Ibid. WARD, Graham, True religion, 1 edition (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002). 659 “The murder of Mr. Lincoln,” The New York Times XIV, no. 4238 (April 21, 1865), https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lprbscsm/scsm1312/scsm1312.pdf. 660 MONTEFIORE, Simon Sebag, Speeches that changed the world (London, UK: Quercus, 2015). 658

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Thus Wojtyla warned about the danger of America replacing its social contract-articulated but natural law-based “defining content” with solely liberal “changing opinion” that first excludes non-liberal thinkers from public debate, and next can justify moral horrors eliminating any such thinkers as threats to the state and its liberal conception of freedom as defined by the ruling powers of the day. Wojtyla countered rather that unchanging moral truths must be taught and handed on from parent to child due to truth and freedom’s integral relationship as expressed in the same Christian scriptures quoted by King: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).661 Wojtyla concludes that to defend the dignity of each person can only be accomplished by guarding the objective truth and freedom of each person to be conformed to that truth in solidarity with her/his fellow persons. For this truth is the very “condition of authentic freedom, the truth that allows freedom to be fulfilled in goodness” (Article 8).662 The liberal social contract according to Wojtyla did not liberate humanity—for in seeking to rip freedom from the truth about the ultimate good, liberalism only began a global and growing tearing apart of humanity, nation from nation, community from community, and person from person. Therefore, the social contract fails in its primary aim. If one route up the mountain is blocked, the climbers must reject the failed path and find the open one. So Wojtyla subtly proposed the only path forward toward justice and thus peace is Thomistic personalist natural law with its resultant virtue ethics (but invoking the concepts without the formal terms) that articulates the common defensible elements from diverse belief systems but also contains a philosophical proof for them that reaches back to metaphysics. Thus Wojtyla warned the UN and the global human family that to continue with the liberal social contract alone with its accompanying utilitarian ethics is to “ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience” which only “shortens the horizon of man's aspiration to goodness” and so “harms the cause of freedom.” If liberalism failed to liberate humanity, then the most fully developed alternative of Thomistic personalism must be rediscovered to thus “recover our hope and our trust” in “regain[ing] sight of the transcendent horizon,” the mountain peak in which all persons and peoples can encounter the good face to face, in the intellect and experience, in the deepest recesses of the heart as the place of encounter between each person and the ultimate conception of the good, namely love. It is Dostoyevsky as we have seen who confessed “man cannot live without 661

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 662 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Homily of His Holiness John Paul II.”

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beauty.” So Wojtyla completed this picture for us: Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer ‘fully reveals man to himself’…this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly ‘expressed’ and, in a way, is newly created (Article 10).663

Wojtyla interestingly never explicitly named the Thomistic personalism he evidently is proposing in his address. What he does do is provide its fullest formulation (in language directed to the common modern man) by noting what this love is that alone can complete the aim of the UN, as it is the ultimate conception of the good which determines what peace and thus justice, freedom, solidarity, duties, and rights are—the good which is Love (that he is convinced philosophically and theologically, in addition to intellectually and experientially, is God): As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ… We Christians believe that in his Death and Resurrection were fully revealed God's love and his care for all creation. Jesus Christ is for us God made man and made a part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person.664

The philosophical or moral transformation Wojtyla proposed is not a partial one dealing solely with the intellect and world ethics experts—it is conversion that is wider and deeper, extending to every nation, every person, and every heart by elevating the debate of rights and duties, or in a true sense, bringing it down to the practical level of every person as a “message of salvation” which “the [Catholic] Church asks only to be able to propose respectively…and to be able to promote, in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family” (Article 17).665 Similar to Maritain and MacIntyre’s emphasis of intermediary organizations or communities, 663

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Redemptor Hominis” (Vatican, 1991), http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html. 664 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 665 Ibid.

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Wojtyla concurrently proposed promoting Thomistic personalist natural law and virtue ethics transformation for the UN dealing at the nation-level, while the Catholic Church (and implicitly all religions and belief systems via his discussion of pluralism) have the world’s nations respect their rights to “propose respectively” their fullest conception of the good in a global conversation and shared growth. Wojtyla appears to have recognized like Maritain the limits of the UN as a political organization which cannot explicitly argue for instance like the Catholic Church that the fullest conception of the good is knowable as but not reducible to the Triune God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. But what the UN can do according to Wojtyla’s personalist teleology is foster the necessary conditions for all persons to achieve her/his flourishing, to reach the summit, the “horizon of man's aspiration to goodness” (Article 16),666 while the intermediary communities work toward what Maritain described as the “task of civilization and culture” (page 56)667 to advance the common good through “progress—material, of course, but also and principally moral and spiritual” (page 43).668 The UN can and should according to Wojtyla choose to preserve its Thomistic Aristotelian roots over the mutually exclusive alternative of its liberal social contract structure, as the latter half of the 20th century provided abundant evidence of liberalism’s global dehumanizing effect, allowing the Nietzschean ‘over-man’ nations to get richer and stronger by further subjugating the poorer and weaker through denial of the spiritual dimension of the person. A polar bear kills enough seals to satisfy his animal appetite, but he does not carve his poetry in the ice about his eternal love for his spouse. The spiritual negation of the late 1900s allowed for the material denial by the modern liberal rich nations of the necessary material needs of the developing nations. That is where the UN can recover “hope and trust” at the national level which liberalism had replaced with distrust and fear, to safeguard all rights, especially “the fundamental right to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience” (Article 10).669 If these fundamental rights are protected at the national level informed by a progressively shared comprehensive conception of the good (through pluralistic dialogue to facilitate non-relativist or syncretistic moral convergence), the world 666

Ibid. MARITAIN, Jacques, The rights of man and natural law. 668 Ibid. 669 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 667

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religions at the intermediary community level can propose to each person their unique fuller vision of the good, or in the Psalms shared by the Christians, Muslims, and Jews: “Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings…Blessed are those who trust in the LORD…O Hope of Israel!” (Psalm 17:5, 7, 13).670 The 9 of every 10 people globally who identity with a religious community share this common understanding that a lasting hope and trust of lasting peace is not principally found in the liberal creations of the modern state which experience indicates devolve into fearful distrust and manipulation by the strong. Hope and trust can thus be safely deposited in the higher conception of the good (not made by man in her/his pure rationality accounts devoid of any higher reality outside of her/his formulations). Societies therefore can be free, allowing Wojtyla and the world religions to work at the local community level to respectfully propose their understandings of what/who the good is for the spiritual needs of humanity, while promoting “in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family” (Article 17).671 As there are no duties without rights and vice versa, there is no UN without such critical intermediary organizations as the family, schools, and churches. And as the UN can inform the intermediary organizations including the world religions about how they can complement global political unity through the philosophical unity of the natural law, the world religions can inform the UN of how they can better serve the world’s nations and thus all persons in complementary parallel with it. Thus, Wojtyla articulated how converging consensus in our pluralistic world is the “task of civilization and culture” (not just at the national level with the UN and local level with the world religions and other intermediary communities) by learning progressively from others as we cooperatively approach closer and closer the summit of a unified conception of the good, together as a human family. A Nobel laureate and Catholic religious sister beatified by Wojtyla, St. (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta, is widely recognized for her work caring for the poor and dying regardless of religion, race, sex, or other distinction.672 670

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 671 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 672 POVOLEDO, Elisabetta, “Mother Teresa is made a saint by Pope Francis,” The New York Times, September 3, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/world/europe/mother-teresa-named-saint-

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Believing she was “not worthy” to receive the Nobel prize, she gave a simple reflection in America before her death about her personal path toward the good that thrust her into the global public stage: “If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”673 For her attempts to restore this ethical and experiential, metaphysical and personalist realization of belonging, she was awarded the prize as the then U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920-present) commented at her death, “She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world.” For Therese and Wojtyla, the progressive convergence of different peoples, cultures, and belief systems on this summit or horizon of the good meant an increased understanding of that familial belonging to each other, the reciprocal duties and rights, and the love between the lover and beloved that finally makes lasting peace possible. Thus this UN address is Wojtyla’s Platonic Republic, his comprehensive Thomistic personalism translated into a political philosophy and ethics which is logically justifiable, broadly intelligible to a pluralistic global community, and pragmatically effective at producing concrete ethical conclusions in the historical and cultural context of the ethical questions. Whereas Socrates provided a description of the just person through a typology of the just state, Wojtyla describes the just person and the just state through their respective ends and thus their intertwined reality as a continuum of hierarchical relationships. Where Socrates implored his Athenian audience to be freed of the coercive subjugation of the peoples through deceptive cave puppets, Wojtyla urged his international audience to move from the coercive soulless liberal social contract to equitable defense of the dignity of each person, illuminated by the universal conception of the good and still be intelligible through the social contract. But where Socrates refused to hazard even a guess as to what the good is, Wojtyla shared his intellectual conviction and experiential belief that it is a concrete reality, a real communion of persons, God made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ but still knowable even in part through the historical and cultural context of each person and the belief systems in which they are embedded. Recognizing one belongs to this human family, drawn out of the cave to the light, to the horizon finally visible from the mountain summit, finally allows mankind according to Wojtyla to come face to face with the peace for which each person desires. And unlike Socrates’ philosopherby-pope-francis.html. 673 MOTHER THERESE, “Reflections on working toward peace,” (Santa Clara University, n.d.), https://legacy.scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/teresa/essay.html. Dahlburg, John-Thor. “Mother Teresa, 87, Dies; Devoted Her Life to Poor.” Los Angeles Times; 1997. http://articles.latimes.com/1997/sep/06/news/mn-29425.

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king, Wojtyla built on the ancient Jewish understanding of God knowable as but not reducible to the highest good: “I myself have installed my king \ on Zion, my holy mountain. \ I will proclaim the decree of the LORD, \ he said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psalms 2:6-7).674 For Wojtyla, the archetype and fulfillment of the philosopher-king is Jesus, God made man, Truth made concrete—and thus, the Prince of Peace who alone can hold politics and philosophy, power and truth, might and right together.

4.5. Wojtylan refinement of the UDBHR Now that we have analyzed how Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism can refine the UN rights-duties paradigm seminally articulated in the 1948 UDHR, let us know focus on the most recent and most applicable application of the UDHR to bioethics, the 2005 UDBHR enacted 10 years after his 1995 address. This section is meant to demonstrate 4 points: (a) the compatibility of Wojtyla’s system with the UDBHR; (b) its common historical roots running through Wojtyla’s system as a development on the same Thomistic foundation for which Malik and Maritain guided the drafting and philosophical justification respectively; (c) its capacity to foster the continued development and application of its pluralism-informed principles and procedures particularly for such a pressing ethical issue as AI-GNR; and (d) its importance as a critical interpretive key for articulating and justifying the internal structure of the UDBHR’s logic as an inherently teleological natural law-based social contract, a personalist contract. These points underscore the political appropriateness and philosophical defensibility of a Wojtylan interpretation of the UDBHR which ultimately rests on the Declaration Drafting Group’s explanation of the document’s creation. The Group asserts that the Declaration’s “most important achievement...is that it anchors the principles that it espouses firmly in the rules governing human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms.”675 One of its further defining accomplishments to achieve this was to “unite these two streams” of bioethics: the one “present since the ancient times” and the “other, conceptualized in more recent times,” with the former drawing “from reflections on medical practice” and the latter from “international human 674

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition. 675 UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Explanatory Memorandum on the Elaboration of the Preliminary Draft Declaration on Universal Norms on Bioethics (21 February 2005). http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.phpဨURL_ID௘=௘1883&URL_ DO௘=௘ DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION௘=௘201.html (accessed 8 Aug 2007).

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rights law.” These global experts reduced all of bioethics practically into these two streams of natural law and the liberal social contract, and yet they are mutually exclusive and the social contract one is even dried up (as evidenced by post-liberal modern thought championed by Nietzsche rejecting rationality at all, as the inevitable consequence of liberalism’s illogical rejection of logic and truth by discarding metaphysics when it rejected Thomistic-Aristotelian natural law). There were only two dominant ethical traditions present in the UDHR’s creation by the philosophical camps of its drafters and ratifying audiences, namely natural law and the social contract. And there is only one recognized ethical standard for the UN (and its derivative consensus declarations including the UDBHR) and international law, namely the UDHR. The UDBHR therefore by its own admission is necessarily committing itself to logical indefensibility if it seeks to justify its principles by both streams or just by the social contract tradition (where the UDHR simply sought to bypass justification at all). Therefore, this section will make the argument that Wojtylan Thomistic personalism can accomplish what the UDBHR cannot on its own: salvaging key insights from the social contract formulation of international human rights but anchoring it in the solid foundation of natural law, with its most comprehensive defense via Thomistic-Aristotelianism, made intelligible to the social contract stream via Wojtyla’s unique personalism encouraging the transition of the contract’s adherents from their sinking ship to the steady one of natural law (from the social to the personalist contract at least and even potentially ultimately to personal communion). This demonstration is set in the context of the UDBHR’s justification for its appropriateness to even formulate a global bioethics standard (against the previously detailed historic role of the document’s parent organization, UNESCO, coordinating unprecedented international cooperation in science particularly genetics and its global reach and majority support by every nation in the world). The document notes the purpose of UNESCO “in identifying universal principles based on shared ethical values to guide scientific and technological development and social transformation.”676 UNESCO and thus UDBHR are by their designed nature rooted in the UDHR and UN Charter and so meant for facilitating converging consensus among diverse cultures and belief systems. It is, in Wojtyla’s conception, the dedicated political community for climbers seeking to reach the top of humanity’s metaphysical moral summit.

676

DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.”

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The historic bioethics document of the UDBHR opens with a personalist or existential claim framed in a natural law-based appeal as the intellectual and experiential common ground with which to unite the global human community analyzing and applying the document in the spirit intended by the authors: that this document is “[c]onscious of the unique capacity of human beings to reflect upon their own existence…to exhibit the moral sense that gives expression to ethical principles.”677 This bioethics project is not some cold, distant, or sterile creation of thinkers toying with the global mechanics of human societies—it is a living document constituted by the common human experience of man’s existence unique among other life, desiring like Socrates to “know thyself,” and expressing the integral bond of every person by virtue of an implicitly indicated common human nature generating this “moral sense.” So the UDBHR mirrors the UDHR with its quiet appeal to natural law as the philosophical foundation, upon which pluralistic belief systems can mutually enhance and converge on the shared ethical principles operationalized as a social contract. Yet the UDBHR introduces two notable developments to its 1948 predecessor: detailed procedures and appeal to international human rights law. In the nearly 6 decades since Malik and Roosevelt’s Declaration, the UDBHR observed the historical trend of a growing corpus of international law enforced primarily on the ideals (like Kantian idealism) and realities (like Thomistic realism) of human rights integrated into state constitutions, laws, and culture rather than being enforced by military might alone. This corpus informs the concrete and specific application of human rights-duties to ethical challenges as they arise in unique historical and cultural contexts, from sex trafficking to nuclear proliferation and so on. This international legal system serves as what Wojtyla would term the remarkable creative and constructive political expression of the philosophical realities of human rights and duties rooted in our common human dignity and thus calling for us to safeguard the common good for each person and each person doing so for the common good reciprocally. And thus as new international laws are articulated, there is a steady progression toward an increasingly clear and shared understanding of a Wojtylan balancing (as the comparable equivalent to Rawlsian reflective equilibrium) of the particular and universal, the specific requirements of justice in a given situation of competing rights and duties claims resolved by a shared conception of an objective good. Natural law is used to justify rights which in turn justify international laws which justify an increasingly detailed and shared understanding of rights and so on. The UDBHR reflects this reality by 677

Ibid.

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specifying throughout the document ethical principles and then procedures protecting enumerated rights as codified and defended by (in varying but repetitive iterations of) and “consistent [or in accordance] with… international human rights law” (Articles 2, 6, 9, 22, 27).678 This natural law hybrid with social contract-like formulation of rights-based international law predicated on a common human dignity are deeply consistent with and made intelligible in their ultimate justification by Wojtyla’s 1995 address. His outline allows the UDBHR to be understood as specific expressions of the natural law applied to concrete bioethics cases, yet the specific expressions are called international rather than natural law while their justification and purpose remain the same. The UDBHR features a Rawlsian-style framework of overlapping consensus from a social contract standpoint as it notes 21 conventions and agreements from the UN and other global organizations. Yet it curiously grounds its authority not in the number of consensus documents, but in an appeal to a deeper natural law foundation. To further explore the relationship between Wojtyla’s natural law and the UDBHR international law, let us analyze the second to last closing point of the document. Article 27 asserts that the principles can only “be limited…by law… consistent with international human rights law.”679 Thus, the UDBHR distances itself from the liberal social contract roots of the UDHR by making positive law subservient to the same natural law from which international human rights law is implicitly derived. Similar to Wojtyla, the UDBHR recognizes implicitly a teleological ordering of its ethical principles and laws toward objective truth about the good as the ultimate authority, not the liberal conception of subjectively and transiently defined truth and good. As for Wojtyla, UDBHR bioethics therefore analyzes the historical questions posed by “the rapid advances in science and their technological applications” from the starting point of “the dignity of the human person and universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms.”680 The subtlety here is critical. This is an explicit objective natural law claim about a shared “moral sense” about our common human dignity that “gives expression to ethical principles” for the UDBHR, unlike the “recognition of the inherent dignity” for the UDHR which was implicitly drawing from natural law but was articulated primarily as political

678

Ibid. Ibid. 680 Ibid. 679

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consensus in the absence of larger moral or philosophical justification. The social contract is about the legal minimalistic standard of preventing destruction of pluralistic peoples in the state through a political conception of justice. Wojtyla’s (Thomistic) personalist communion is about the legal AND moral horizon of permanent union through a metaphysical conception of justice fulfilled in love. Marriage throughout cultures and times has featured both legal and moral elements: the state has some authority and safeguarding role of the couple, and the couple has a common moral duty and joy in which the husband and wife give his/her life to the other. The social contract reduces this union at an individual level for the couple and international level for states to a business transaction of convenience by focusing solely on the legal dimension. Wojtyla’s personalist communion elevates this union to a sustainable reciprocal common union of persons by focusing on an integral vision of man in all her/his dimensions fulfilled and perfected in love. The UDBHR and UDHR cannot be reduced to the social contract for their common objective moral concepts (with the UDBHR providing a more complete and clear articulation of them than the UDHR from which it developed these concepts); Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism is needed to uniquely make them intelligible and demonstrate their philosophical defensibility and political pragmatism. The Thomistic teleological natural law elements of the objective good is further apparent quietly in the UDHR through how the universal good orders nations and persons. In the thought of Aquinas, Maritain, MacIntyre, and Wojtyla, the purpose of the nation is the safeguarding of the common good to ensure the material needs of persons so they can achieve their ultimate end (which is their fulfillment spiritually or union with the Supreme Good). For the UDBHR, this common good is articulated in a broad definition of health (understood comprehensively including the social determinants of health within overall social development) is “a central purpose of governments” (Article 14).681 Interestingly, this article continues by asserting “health is one of the fundamental rights” for every person since “health is essential to [the right to] life itself and must be considered to be a social and human good” (Article 14). The UDBHR and Wojtyla are in deep convergence here that the state must protect the good of each person as its “central purpose” instead of simply avoiding conflict through liberal democratically espoused transient values and regulations.

681

Ibid.

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And even more interestingly, the UDBHR mirrors Wojtyla’s passionate defense of an “ethic of solidarity” in his 1995 UN address along with his argument for it proceeding from recognition and respect for multiculturalism and pluralist beliefs and thus leading to responsible use of freedom to build a civilization of love in which rights and freedoms are permanently defended. Articles 12, 13, and 14 sequentially in the 2005 Declaration are “Respect for cultural diversity and pluralism,” “Solidarity and cooperation,” and “Social responsibility and health.”682 Before the UDBHR arrives at the principle of the state’s social responsibility to protect health as a common good, it first argues from and for respect for pluralism and “[s]olidarity among human beings and international cooperation toward that end” (Article 13). Yet the concept of solidarity is foreign to the UDHR and the UN Charter. It was not until 1995 that Wojtyla provides the first documented defense of solidarity among UN addresses and documents, a concept that he developed in depth in his 1991 Centesimus Annus in which he drew on his Thomistic predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, who in turn drew on Plato and Aristotle.683 Wojtyla in that document elaborated on solidarity in the ancient Greek philosophical sense as ‘friendship’ or in the later Pope Pius XI’s sense as ‘social charity,’ developed after him by Pope Paul VI in the ‘civilization of love’ (Article 10). In our earlier treatment of this topic, we already had analyzed how Wojtyla linked friendship or social charity to the state’s primary duty to its people in terms of its direct achievement of this duty—by “defending the weakest” through resolving competing liberal claims from autonomy for goods through an appeal to the objective good, requiring defense of the dignity and thus rights of each person (Article 15). The UDBHR echoes Wojtyla’s address by asserting a similar claim in Article 24: States should respect and promote solidarity between and among States, as well as individuals, families, groups and communities, with special regard for those rendered vulnerable by disease or disability or other personal, societal or environmental conditions and those with the most limited resources.684

As found in Maritain, MacIntyre, and Wojtyla’s thought, the UDBHR places special emphasis and protection on intermediary communities so the state can respect its limits promoting the common good with its minimalistic conception of the good, thus allowing the intermediary organizations 682

Ibid. WOJTYLA, Karol, “Centesimus Annus.” 684 DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.” 683

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including the world’s religions to continue unifying common moral dialogue, “propose respectfully” the more comprehensive conceptions of the universal good as knowable in varying conceptions and degrees but not reducible to God, and “promote, in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family” (Article 17).685 Given the UDBHR’s insistence about vulnerability, this section would be remiss in its Wojtylan reading of the UDBHR if it failed to consider the role of the Thomist physician-philosopher and member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee, Edmund Pellegrino (1920-2013 A.D), named to the Committee one year before the UDBHR was approved.686 The Declaration’s special attention required among states and intermediary organizations to the vulnerable populations parallels the pioneering work of Pellegrino who sought to develop a three-step Thomism-informed methodology for pluralistic clinicians to solve bioethical cases: (1) illness makes the patient “vulnerable” and so requires them to trust the physician (page 35); (2) the physician’s non-proprietary medical knowledge is for the common good of the sick (page 36); and (3) the physician by virtue of her/his “public promise” upon entering the “profession” constitutes a “covenant” to use that knowledge for the good of the sick (page 36).687 Therefore, up to and through his tenure as the US Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics,688 Pellegrino doggedly argued that medicine therefore is the covenantal patient-physician relationship which makes medicine a moral enterprise regardless of the belief systems of the patient or physician.689 This central thesis parallels Wojtyla’s linkage of vulnerability with solidarity as a state’s duty “defending the weakest” (Article 15),690 integral to the UDBHR’s more complete development of the UDHR’s natural law-informed social contract philosophical structure and constitutive moral principles.

685

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 686 THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS, “Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D” n.d., Georgetown University, Bioethics Archive. 687 PELLEGRINO, Edmund, Thomasma, David, The virtues in medical practice (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993). 688 THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS, “Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D.” 689 GERAGHTY, Karen, “Guarding the art: Edmund D. Pellegrino, MD,” AMA Journal of Ethics 3, no. 11 (November 2001), http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/ 2001/11/prol1-0111.html. 690 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Centesimus Annus.”

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Aside from this emphasis on dignity-based solidarity, the argument for the UDBHR ultimately being a teleologically-justified document is further developed by pluralism not being permitted to “to be invoked to infringe upon human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, nor upon the principles set out in this Declaration” (Article 12).691 The Declaration goes further by advocating “informed pluralistic public debate, seeking the expression of all relevant opinions” (Article 18), without qualification if those belief systems meet the liberal standard of a neutral conception of the good as found in Rawls’ championing of the liberal social contract. The contract by his robust definition excludes belief systems if they invoke an objective or universal conception of the good (effectively, all non-liberal or religiously affiliated conceptions). Yet for the UDBHR, pluralism is nonliberally restricted only if it contradicts the foundational objective conception of the good echoed in human dignity. The argument for a liberal social contract foundation for the UDBHR is completely incompatible with its teleological structure. The basis can only be in natural law honoring the objective truth of the good informing a common human dignity and thus derivative common “moral sense” which generates the international human rights law and these ethical principles. The UDBHR goes so far as to reject the liberal reduction of the person to solely a material individual (devoid of a transcendent spiritual dimension) by asserting that the “person’s identity includes biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual dimensions” (Preamble). True to Wojtyla’s 1995 exhortation to the UN, the UDBHR follows his conception of the “transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience” (Article 16)692 by not reducing the person to a repeatable autonomous unit of economic consumption or political affiliation, but rather like Wojtyla, recognizes the person as a societal member on a journey to fulfillment transcending the current material present. Health is conceived holistically by the UDBHR, not seeking to restrict it or “impose an answer to the mystery of man”693 as the Rawlsian and social contract tradition require. Let us conclude this section by analyzing some final UDBHR elements with a Wojtylan reading. Its first ethical principle sets the stage for the subsequent: this bioethical standard rejects the primary liberal ethical system of deontology and utilitarianism by setting its first ethical principle as respect for “[h]uman dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms,” 691

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.” 692 Ibid. 693 Ibid.

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to the point that the “interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society” (Article 3).694 The liberal conception of autonomy is respected in Article 5, but is elevated to a teleological level by protecting its exercise provided it does not infringe on the natural law-based international human rights with its objective conception of the good (cf. Article 12). This refined autonomy conception manifests itself in limiting life science technology to the ethically defensible, not only for all humanity equally in this moment but also for “future generations, including…their genetic constitution” (Article 16). We will return particularly to this point shortly about AI-GNR and its capacity to permanently warp human genetics in exchange for short-term technological or military advantage from a liberal conception of corporations or states seeking superiority of their self-interests over others. This distancing from liberal deontological or utilitarian ethics systems (as the predominant systems in the social contract tradition) is further evidence in the UDBHR’s emphasis on virtue ethics. Where Kant’s categorical imperatives or Mill’s utilitarian maxim sought to justify liberal ethical conclusions purely on rationality grounds, this UN bioethics standard appeals to the higher level of an objective good which informs the anthropological and philosophical understanding of the person as a moral agent perfected progressively by virtues, as the Declaration promotes “[p]rofessionalism, honesty, integrity and transparency in decision-making” (Article 18). Finally, similar to Wojtyla’s interdisciplinary call for “anthropology, ethics and law” (Article 7) to be leveraged to understand the concrete historical context of fluid pluralism to thus effectively apply “wisdom and virtue” (Article 18) to converge on shared conclusions, the UDBHR strongly promotes “multidisciplinary and pluralist ethics committees” to “assess the relevant ethical, legal, scientific and social issues” and so “provide advice on ethical problems in clinical settings” (Article 19). The social contract by design lacks the capacity to resolve competing claims from outside the liberal subjective conception of the good. If the UDBHR calls for pluralistic convergence on concrete bioethical conclusions for clinicians and researchers, it therefore must draw on its historical natural law roots to facilitate this convergence (unlike the predominant social contract). The UDBHR therefore has an intelligibility and consistency that is uniquely discernible and defensible if understood as shifting from an exclusively liberal social contract self-contained structure to reclaim its natural law 694

DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.”

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metaphysical foundation (enabling that structure) as articulated comprehensively and appealing broadly through Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism. If the UDBHR is factually “[r]ecalling the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,”695 and is primarily influenced by the liberal social contract and the natural law mediated through the foundational UDHR as the previous chapters have argued, and Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism remedies the philosophical weaknesses in Maritain and Malik by extension of their common natural law conception, then the UDBHR expresses a notable philosophical progression from the UDHR. And if this is the case, then Wojtyla’s 1995 address serves as a critical key to understanding how his comprehensive modern exposition of a Thomistic personalism can refine the UN rights-duties social contract as in the case of the UDBHR which is compatible with his unique arguments and thus provides a promising means to salvaging the UN’s capacity for political and philosophical unification of the world’s nations before such pressing challenges as AI-GNR. Now we have attempted above to demonstrate the philosophical soundness and thus proof of concept for interpreting the UN philosophical paradigm of human rights in light of Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism by showing not only the compatibility between the systems of the UN and Wojtyla but also the necessity of using Wojtyla to deliver the conclusions the UN intends but cannot do based on its own current formulation (without continued use of the concepts and justification in his Thomistic personalism to progressively refine the UN system as i.e. the UDBHR did for the UDHR). Let us conclude this chapter therefore by answering the primary theoretical objection with two major implications to such a move (beginning with Thomistic personalism and synthesizing it with UN human-rights deeply embedded in the social contract tradition, rather than our even earlier and unsuccessful attempt to do this the other way around). The objection is that the two systems cannot be synthesized because their dissimilarities make them mutually exclusive. The first implied challenge is even if a synthesis is supposedly forced, it distorts one system at the expense of the other so that the subjugated one is not recognizable as its original self (which renders a synthesis pointless). The second implication is the question of why even attempt a synthesis in the first place if by Ockham’s Razor we desire the simplest, most philosophically sound and politically effective system? The answer is the Rawlsian social contract (as the most robust social contract) may refine its modern metaphysical foundation (that rejects metaphysics) with a pre-modern one (that recognizes objective truth and thus the 695

Ibid.

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derivative natural law) and so can defensibly account for pluralistic ethical convergence, but by doing so its modern proponents largely consider this conception no longer being Rawlsian—but we can take Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism, with its philosophical defensibility in both its premodern metaphysical foundation and its pluralistic ethical convergence and demonstrate its intelligibility to Rawlsian social contractarians such that it is not so much as a synthesis between two competing belief systems but rather a converging consensus. A synthesis is ultimately not possible, but it need not be. The liberal social contract and all of modern philosophical systems deriving from the Enlightenment ultimately (as Nietzsche observed but could not remedy) collapse before the flood of logical scrutiny, as a home built on shifting sand rather than unmoving rock does before an overwhelming tsunami. Thus Thomistic personalism cannot be synthesized with such systems because under logical scrutiny such systems are swept away. But the core insights of this tradition and particularly the social contract (i.e. pluralistic overlapping convergence is possible) can be preserved by Wojtylan Thomistic personalism as it can concurrently build a bridge to thinkers from this camp, draw them to a middle position of a personalist contract, and ultimately enable them to reach its fullest expression of personalist communion. Yet for global peace to be possible, only the personalist contract (uniting diverse belief systems via natural law) is needed for it is compatible (unlike the social contract) with the ultimate end for the person and the global human family manifested as union with the Supreme Good and implicitly each other. The personalist contract can flexibly grow to communion as a child grows biologically to unite with the divine, but the social contract (and the Enlightenment successive modern philosophies) are fixed like a machine that can never expand past its programming as a tool used by humans. The argument supporting this conclusion is derived from Wojtyla and his fellow Thomistic personalist, W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (19152008 A.D.). (But let the reader prepare herself/himself, for I am about to present the philosophical response which also anticipates, gives way to, and is more fully formulated in theological terms as all of human knowledge reaches its peak by peering beyond its furthest boundaries into the unknown past its human limits. Though the philosophical argument is self-supporting, it is unsatisfactorily lacking the deeper and richer dimensions without the theological. No rational patient with cancer begrudges a physician from using chemistry to better understand the biological effects of a chemotherapeutic medication meant to cure the patient. I am so confident

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in your intellect (and stamina staying with me for so many pages) that I will commit what modern philosophical considers to be heresy and humbly admit I must turn to another discipline to better understand mine for the good of the patient, that is the modern person sick with cancerous logical fallacies, draining the life and future from the global human family). Now back to the answer. Wojtyla in 1961 forcefully affirmed the possibility of and need for the synthesis of pre-modern Thomist-Aristotelian realism and modern phenomenology as a byproduct of liberal rationalism—and so he produced his Thomistic personalism.696 This need primarily derived from the philosophical orphaning of modern man—humanity followed Descartes to the suicidal brink of the existential cliff by losing the ethical and anthropological grasp of who she/he is. The origin of this current crisis is the liberal rejection of Thomism and thus metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics in any systematic, substantive, defensible form that does not collapse under the illogical weight of a circular argument (i.e. justifying subjective truth by denying God and objective truth on the objective claim that there is only subjective truth). Modern humanity in fear turned back toward the Platonic cave and away from the objective truth of the metaphysical Supreme Good atop a mountain epistemologically surmountable, despite the robust evidence of the philosophical superiority of Thomistic realism defending an objective account of truth and the good. Therefore for Wojtyla to save humanity, the subjective implications of Thomism had to be unpacked. By analyzing how a person subjectively encounters or experiences the true, the good, and the beautiful, we can reason back to an objective encounter or account of what the true, the good, and the beautiful actually is. Per Wojtyla, a synthesis or marriage must occur between these the disparate pre-modern and modern philosophies, or more specifically, true personalist subjectivity must be birthed from Thomistic metaphysics to more fully complete Thomism and thus provide a compelling account to suspicious plural modern man (page 2),697 and so more accurately develop the subjective or personalist implications of objective Thomistic metaphysics. Thomism becomes more itself when it is more completed with 696

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Personalizm Tomistyczny (Thomistic personalism),” in Person and community: Selected essays, Volume 4 of Catholic thought from Lublin, ed. Andrew N. Woznicki, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1993 {1961}), 165–75. 697 KREEFT, Peter, “Thomersonalism, or Thomistic Personalism (or Personalistic Thomism) A marriage made in heaven, hell, or Harvard?” (30th Annual Aquinas Lecture, Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, 2011), http://jp2forum.org/wp-content/uploads/Kreeft-ThomPers.pdf.

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personalism, and personalism becomes more itself and defensible as a distinct body of philosophical insight when Thomism purges it of its indefensible elements. Wojtyla and Clark thus diverged from Maritain and MacIntyre by using their personalism to provide a more complete Thomistic account of modern man, largely understanding herself/himself in the liberal social contract tradition, so urgent ethical challenges including AI-GNR can be addressed. Clarke demonstrated how this is possible in his 1993 book, Person and Being. He began with Aquinas’ argument that the “person is that which is highest in all of nature” (I 29.3).698 Clarke carefully traced the implications of this densely packed philosophical conclusion by emphasizing the possibility and necessity of Thomism synthesized or rather more fully completed with personalism, by first wrestling with the premises regarding the ontological reality of the human person. By Thomism, Clarke could conclude metaphysically that being and person are already inseparably bound (as each person exists as a being that is a person), and so logically Thomism and personalism must naturally be as well. Each person is simultaneously object and subject, constituted by the communicable human essence (nature, soul, or form) and the incommunicable matter (body and personality) that actualizes that essence. Essence and existence. Being and person. Thomism and personalism. This synthesis thus recognizes the already latent and now defensible account of convergence for uniting the objective and subjective, the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the individual, substance and relation, being and becoming, reason and experience, causality and phenomenology, ethics and psychology, metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and anthropology (page 3).699 I can understand the biology of my patient’s cancer. But if I do not plunge deeper into the depths of chemistry, I cannot understand how one medication versus another can start healing her/his sick biology. So the above argument was from primarily considering the human person philosophically. The following will be from primarily considering God theologically. If the essence of a chair is actualized in the recognizable matter of a chair or the human essence in the recognizable existence of a person standing before you, then what is the essence of the Supreme Good, God? Existence itself. Whereas the essence of something limits it to a 698

AQUINAS, Thomas, The Summa Theologica, trans. The Fathers of The English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981 {1485} {1274}). 699 KREEFT, Peter, “Thomistic Personalism (or Personalistic Thomism): A marriage made in heaven, hell, or Harvard?”

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particular type of existence (which in turn limits it to given time, place, and mode of being), the essence of God being existence itself means He is unlimited, present in all existing things, actualizing their essences. This allows Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973 A.D.) to conclude in “On the Ontological Mystery” that the study of holiness is the introduction to ontology, or the metaphysics subdiscipline focused on the nature of being (page 6).700 The closer one comes to God through virtue fulfilled in love (which includes prayer within religion that is the application of the virtue of justice to the person’s relationship with God giving to Him what is due to Him as the person’s loving Creator) then the closer she/he comes to reality itself. To know what is is, is to know the God who revealed himself to Moses in the Jewish scriptures, repeated in the Christian New Testament and Muslim Quran: “Moses protested to God, ‘if I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your ancestors has sent me to you, and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them? God replied to Moses: ‘I am who I am’” (Exodus 7:13-14).701 Thomism tells us about the am in that divine selfdefinition; personalism tells us about the I. Personhood is the act of existing of a human actualizing and thus perfecting (completing) the essence of her/his human nature. And holiness is the perfection or end perfecting the person, as it is conformity and ultimate unity with God who is the fullness of the good. Aquinas never completed his great Summa, nor his realism which could have been more elaborately explored as an early personalist foundation. It was not the historic philosophical heights at the end of his short life which led Aquinas to humbly abandon his pen—it was the glimpse of the God he sought in prayer, a man in love who finally encountered face to face his Beloved, and on doing so said all he had written was only “like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me” (page 110).702 He arrived at the mountaintop, embraced and consumed by the truth, the love, the freedom he sought. The monotheistic world religions understand Adam and Eve made in the likeness of God, called to perfection through union via love of each other as man and woman, masculine and feminine, husband and wife. The liberal philosopher and scientist view modern man as making herself/himself one’s own god but without God. And the Thomist personalist according to Wojtyla and Clarke understand God (the communion or common union of 700

Ibid. New American Bible, New American Bible Revised Edition (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2010). 702 FOSTER, Kenelm, The life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Biographical documents (Harlow, UK: Longmans, Green and Co., 1959). 701

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three divine persons who are Love itself) became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ as the New Adam born to the New Eve of Mary of Nazareth. The Platonic sun came down from the Jewish mountain of the Lord, to reveal himself in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to all man so man through God’s action not her/his own can share in His divinity forever. And thus that which is knowable as but not reducible to Good as the highest good took on flesh in Jesus, allowing in His person the perfect co-existence consubstantially of divinity and humanity, theology and the natural sciences (along with philosophy), and Thomism and personalism. Our hesitation to acknowledge theology in our philosophical analysis or the divine in our human experience is a modern construct, not human characteristic. Even prior to Aristotle investigating ‘theology or metaphysics,’ the first physician-philosopher, Imhotep (2667-2648 B.C., Egyptian: ) served as the high priest of Ra, the sun god (page 12).703,704 His systematic knowledge of medications and physiology was not divorced from his knowledge of the divine reality, which itself made medicine and ethics possible. In the Egyptian temples, the first Egyptian physicians were trained, bringing health to hurt, order to disorder, truth to deceit, and Ma’at to Isfet in those ancient structures in which man encountered the gods, and realized she/he were not divine. The fact that the temple would take on flesh, God would become man to make the ascent up the metaphysical mountain objectively and subjectively clear for man is not foreign to the Thomistic personalist. It is the conclusion to which millennia of human logic and experiences points. Like T.S. Eliot, can we therefore discover that in “the end of all our exploring / …[is] to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time”?705 The earliest physicians and philosophers understood truth as indivisible, unlike modern man who follows Kant’s formulation of the Enlightenment artificially cleaving the ‘useful’ known (being sterilely truncated in order to fit neatly in the sharp boundaries of man’s postEnlightenment rationality) and the ‘useless’ unknown (which stood indifferently outside of man’s reach). To the ancients, we moderns are advanced in tools but not thought, or technology but not truth. And so to recover their true insights and halt our human regression, is it possible to 703 OSLER, William, The evolution of modern medicine (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004 {1913}). 704 HIGHFIELD, Roger, “How Imhotep gave us medicine,” The Daily Telegraph, May 10, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3293164 /How-Imhotep-gave-us-medicine.html. 705 ELIOT, T.S., Little Gidding, First Edition (London, UK: Faber and Faber, 1942).

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recover what Imhotep and the earliest physician-philosophers understood? Through the phenomenology of personalism, can we subjectively begin to approach objective truth by diving deeper into our common concrete human experience? Through the realism of Thomism, can we begin to ascend the truth of the good by our common human capacities of abstract thought? And so in Thomistic personalism, can we begin an integrated, truly human shared journey toward that mountaintop, united by the incarnate God as the Supreme Good acting as the upward direction and peak who guides our differing paths to converge in the same direction? There are many paths up the mountain, but only one direction. There are my pluralistic belief systems, but only one movement forward. Contrary to Malik, Maritain, and the UN, it is this embrace of such a priori, theoretical, fundamental convergence of peoples and belief systems that precisely guarantees the hope of the end or telos of humanity and each person’s individual flourishing with the reciprocal good of resultant community peace. This work argues that the natural law of Thomistic personalism can secure this convergence, by elucidating true insights via natural law in the UDBHR and UDHR, by defending pluralist systems and cultures as the “authentic search for Truth” in Wojtyla’s words, rather than the social contract’s sterilization and extermination of such differences if they contrast with liberalism. If we are serious about peace globally, we must get serious about justice individually, which can begin by a Thomistic personalist defense for our differences rooted in a shared human nature, end, and thus path toward this end on the epistemological ascent up the unmoving metaphysical mountain. Otherwise, our peace will blow away with the advent of each new revolutionary technology, beginning with AI-GNR as it increasingly nearly did with nuclear warfare. Interestingly, ‘Imhotep’ means “He who comes in peace.” Could it be that like the pyramids he designed, that we can finally begin to glimpse together the peace we globally seek amid the challenges of AI-GNR by converging on the objective good atop this metaphysical mountain which draws our minds and hearts upward?

CHAPTER 5 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

5.1. AI-GNR historical development We have finally arrived at applying our primary ethical system to the particular case of AI with its most important overlapping revolutions and applications in genetic engineering and nanotechnology as AI-GNR. This system will be Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism refining the UN rightsduties social contract, chiefly articulated in most complete formulation by the UDBHR developing the UDHR. The introduction chapter included an overview of the significance of AI-GNR. Thus we will focus this section on the historical development which has shaped the principle concept of the “Singularity”, which in turn will frame our analysis of the ethically relevant technical aspects in AI-GNR. British mathematician, Alan Turing (1912-1954 A.D.), is widely recognized as the father of AI and computer science (page 481)706 who set the stage for the Singularity question. During WWII while at Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Turing created the major automated deciphering solution to the Nazi’s coding system, Enigma, by creating an early computer based on sequential conditional probability (developed with I.J. Good [1916-2009 A.D.]). This solution resulted in Ultra, or the British military code-breaking intelligence system (page xx),707 which accelerated decoding of the German’s Enigma machine-based coded messages, saving an estimated 14 million+ lives by shortening the European war front by 2 years.708 It was then in 1950 that he published his landmark 706

BEAVERS, Anthony, “Alan Turing: Mathematical mechanist,” in Alan Turing: His work and impact, ed. S. Barry Cooper and Jan Van Leeuwen (Waltham, MA: Elsevier, 2013), 481–85. 707 F.H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, eds., Codebreakers: The inside Story of Bletchley Park (Oxford University Press, 1993). 708 COPELAND, Jack, “Alan Turing: The codebreaker who saved ‘millions of lives,’” BBC Technology, June 19, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-

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paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” by seeking to answer affirmatively “Can machines think?” by proposing what has become the standard in AI,709 his Turing test, to judge how closely a computer can artificially approximate or even eventually exceed human intelligence (page 433).710 Turing’s Bletchley colleague, Good, continued to develop the societal implications for AI concurrently with his work with Turing on computer science and the sequential statistics in what became popularized as Bayesian statistics.711 Following his code-breaking days with Turing and the Ultra project, Good in 1965 introduced the concept of “intelligence explosion” in which “an ultra-intelligent [sic] machine” not only surpasses human intelligence but also applies that superior AI to “design even better machines,” meaning the “intelligence of man would be left far behind.”712 Good mused in his unpublished autobiography that the “survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine,” but in 1998 he professed his fear that it would only produce humanity’s extinction: “Man will construct the deus ex machina in his own image,” which will turn and kill his creator.713 Nietzsche made in God’s image turned and philosophically sought to kill God. But AI now made in mankind’s image may soon turn and physically kill man (and all of mankind). As liberalism had sought to create a political philosophy and thus world in man’s own image (instead of that of God or any higher universal conception of the good), the Cold War made Good fear AI would be the final arms race between competing nations, each seeking to create its own mechanical champion to overpower that of the other. Sixteen years later, fellow British mathematician, Stephen Hawking, expressed similar fears that the “development of full AI could spell the end of the human race,” since it “would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate.”714 18419691. 709 PINAR SAYGIN, A., CICEKLI, I., AKMAN, V., “Turing Test: 50 years later,” Minds and Machines, 2000, http://www.springerlink.com/index/PH7275K8W0137245.pdf. 710 TURING, Alan, “Computing machinery and intelligence,” Mind; a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 59, no. 236 (1950): 433–60. 711 VAN DER VAT, Dan, “Obituary: Jack Good,” The Guardian, April 28, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/29/jack-good-codebreaker-obituary. 712 GOOD, Irving John, “Speculations concerning the first ultra-intelligent machine,” Advances in Computers 6 (1966): 31–88. 713 BARRAT, James, Our final invention: Artificial intelligence and the end of the human era. 714 CELLAN-JONES, Rory, “Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could

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This historic point unleashed by the ‘intelligence explosion’ was first termed ‘Singularity’715 by Turing’s AI collaborator,716 the Hungarian-American John von Neumann (1903-1957 A.D.), considered one of humanity’s most influential mathematicians.717 The median projected year of this point among AI experts is 2040 A.D.718 This hypothetical moment in human evolution hearkens back to mathematical Singularity, in which a particular mathematical object is not well defined or even definable such as black holes or infinity when x approaches zero in the function 1/x.719 AI’s technological Singularity would be irrelevant if it occurred in a temporo-spatial vacuum. But AI is developed in our material universe in which the greater revolutionary change to humanity occurs with the more fundamental material components. Therefore, genetic engineering and nanotechnology are of particular concern, even more so given the advanced states both of these disciplines already occupy. This is why Sun Microsystems’ former chief scientist and creator of Java as the world leader in computer programming languages,720 Bill Joy (1954-present), in his landmark article, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” identifies AI, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology as the “most powerful 21st-century technologies” which “are threatening to make humans an endangered specifies.”721 Joy argues that the latter two technologies fueled by a supraintelligent AI can have increasingly devastating and uncontrollable manipulation of humanity and the material universe’s fundamental building blocks, a danger exacerbated by their decentralized nature. Unlike the last end mankind.” 715 ULAM, Stanislaw, “John von Neumann 1903-1957,” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1958, http://www.ams.org/bull/1958-64-03/S0002-99041958-10189-5/. 716 MACRAE, Norman, John von Neumann: The scientific genius who pioneered the modern computer, game theory, nuclear deterrence, and much more (New York, NY: Pantheon Press, 1992). 717 VON NEUMANN, John, John von Neumann: Selected letters, ed. Miklos Redei (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2005). 718 ARMSTRONG, Stuart, “How we’re predicting AI,” (Singularity Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2012). 719 ARNOLD, V.I., et al., “Singularity theory” (Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, n.d.), https://www.newton.ac.uk/files/reports/scientific/sgt.pdf. 720 “History of Java technology,” Oracle, accessed May 18, 2017, http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/javahistory-index198355.html. 721 JOY, Bill, “Why the future doesn’t need us.”

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century’s nuclear bomb which ushered in a previously unimaginable threat of global destruction but which could be controlled by the threat of mutually assured destruction among nations, only those motivated and wealthy enough states could afford to gather the required resources and expertise to create nuclear arsenals. But AI-GNR on the other hand requires few resources openly available to diverse even non-state stakeholders globally, with repercussions not limited to the single time and place of a nuclear bomb detonation—the effects can be guaranteed by AI to be self-propagating throughout the atomic structure of the universe and genetic structure of humanity. Once a supra-intelligence AI for instance is adequately developed, it can instruct nanorobots and genetic engineering program to continue replicating themselves or making decentralized fully autonomous changes respectively to the atomic structure and genetic code without (or even against) human intervention. Joy’s collaborator, Raymond Kurzweil (1948-present), takes a more optimistic approach. He agrees with Joy about the central importance of the AI-GNR revolution accelerating the Singularity and thus its dangers for human extinction (page 205).722 Yet he differs in that he believes its evil applications can be outpaced by the ethical development of AI-GNR. Kurzweil argues that AI is the most significant development of the 21st century, “comparable in importance to the development of biology itself” (page 296). This advancement can thus unleash the potential of the other two revolutions. Humans can theoretically approach near immortality with AI-guided genetic engineering effected principally by nanotechnology (page 226) which can reverse aging and cure diseases through elaborate understanding of genetic manipulation (page 212-219). The hope that inspires Kurzweil in contrast to Joy is the most promising defense against the possible weaponization of AI-GNR is ethical education for societies globally so that the “values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and diversity” can ensure that AI “embedded in our society” therefore “will reflect our values” (page 424). AI is only as good or evil as us its creators. Regardless, the world’s largest general scientific organization with 120,000+ members, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), published a response to Joy’s article in 2001 whose conclusions were echoed 5 years later by Kurzweil. Xerox Corporation’s former chief scientist and consultant, John Brown (1940-present) and Paul Duguid (1955-present) respectively, argue in their AAAS article that Joy’s vision about an apocalyptic AI-GNR Singularity ignores the social factors 722

Kurzweil, The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology.

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which can produce a more Kurzweil-like advancement of humanity through ethical AI-GNR development: Social systems—in the form of governments, the courts, formal and informal organizations, social movements, professional networks, local communities, market institutions and so forth—shape, moderate and redirect the raw power of technologies (page 79).723

As evidence of this, Brown and Duguid point to consumer backlash against genetically modified foods and near absent technological progress in true learning social cognition currently plaguing AI-based robotics (page 80-81). They additionally reach beyond the current status of AI-GNR to the historical example of the failed prophecy of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834 A.D.) that humanity would destroy itself as technological advances in agriculture would not keep pace with the population rise (page 82), for it did not account for the human capacity of innovation and adaptation. Therefore, the authors emphasize (in an implicitly natural law fashion) that our common human nature is the greatest safeguard against cataclysmic Singularity for “critical social mechanisms allow society to shape its future” through solidarity uniting humanity to act together against expected and unexpected consequences of even exponential technological progress (page 81). “Social and technological systems” according to the authors “evolve together in complex feedback loops, wherein each drives, restrains and accelerates change in the other” (page 83). If the Cold War pushed I.J. Good into believing supra-intelligent machines would destroy instead of save man, the post-Cold War era of peace under continual UN and intermediary organizations including globalizing political economic trends are increasingly converting more scientists and philosophers into this cautiously optimistic development of AI-GNR. Yet this optimism does not disprove Joy’s central argument about AI-GNR’s decentralization of technological power and thus its risks, since it only takes a small group of individuals to unleash devastating and permanent consequences of AI-GNR. Mutually assured destruction in nuclear deterrence policy for instance only works when an attacked nation knows where to fire their missiles. An individual and even small group with evil or malicious AI-GNR can hide in the shadows.

723

BROWN, DUGUID, “A response to Bill Joy and the doom-and-gloom technofuturists.”

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5.2. Wojtyla-refined UDBHR application for AI-GNR This section will focus primarily on AI-driven GNR in general due to the multitude of applications for it, and since this work is the first known to apply the Thomistic personalist refinement of the UN rights social contract bioethics system to it. There will be a secondary focus on particular AIGNR applications which have notable implications for inter-state relations including military application because inter-state relations falls within the purview of the UN and the inter-state particularly military uses are the most ethically pressing applications of AI-GNR. We will begin with the bioethical analysis of AI-GNR theoretically and then move to recommendations for its practical application. Of final note, this section is not meant to be a definitive treatment of AI and its most important applications in AI-GNR but rather alternative purposes: (1) proof-ofconcept demonstration of the political effectiveness and philosophical defensibility of a Wojtyla-refined UDBHR paradigm particularly for this topic (thus suggesting a viable approach to producing an eventual comprehensive bioethical critique of AI); (2) foundational application anticipating and hopefully informing methodological advances of the global bioethics community to prevent the worst harms and facilitate the greatest benefits of AI-GNR development; and (3) ultimately a pluralistic and interreligious convergence for global consensus of states and intermediary communities (particularly religions including non-affiliated, community organizations, and corporations) producing robust and effective politics and policies animated by a “culture of freedom” to safeguard international peace and humanity’s survival through ethical development of such revolutionary technologies as AI-GNR.

5.2.1. Theoretical analysis We begin at the interdisciplinary point of the UDBHR drawing on its UNESCO base to “guide scientific and technological development and social transformation” with “multidisciplinary and pluralistic” analysis (Articles 2, 19, 22).724 Similar to Brown and Duguid’s emphasis that the ethics of AI-GNR is unintelligible without understanding its social context, let us begin with the supplementary disciplines of anthropology, evolution, and political economics to understand the “social transformation” contextualizing AI-GNR. Similar to Wojtyla’s anthropology, the UDBHR 724

WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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affirms the person with an “identity [that] includes biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual dimensions” rather than simply a repeatable autonomous agent like identical self-driving cars rolling out of Google’s Waymo factories, distinguishable solely by their vehicle identification number. And as such, humans can “reflect upon their own existence” and “exhibit the moral sense that gives expression to ethical principles.” This has particular urgency for AI-GNR on the battlefield at the interface of humanity as this technology can come in two operational types: augmented and independent. The first can already be seen in exoskeleton-like suits or neuro-embedded chips to augment human soldiers by predicting and recommending defensive and offensive maneuvers, or it can manifest as a semi-biologic robotic drone acting independently of the soldier. The US Air Force Chief Scientist Gregory Zacharias briefly summarized in January 2017 about ongoing military research into the F-35 fighter jet with its Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) computer system which anticipates a near-term point in which the human pilot can control or allow AI to control drone wingmen flying with the pilot for reconnaissance, defense, and target termination.725 These ‘robot soldiers’ are more advanced versions of America’s X-47B stealth drone, British Taranis stealth drone, Israel’s Harpy missile, and South Korea’s SGR-A1 sentry already currently in use.726 As the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons met twice in 2017 deliberating whether to ban AI autonomous weapons,727 it will be critical to ensure AI-GNR be programmed to assimilate moral guidelines with moral preference always reserved for man over machine and to ensure no person is ever used as a means for any end. This points to the deeper existential question about the moral status of such machines. The UDBHR is predicated upon the natural law-articulated moral sense naturally present in humanity which recognizes the dignity of each human person and thus the rights each person is due (and the duties designed to defend them). But what about robots? AI-GNR plausibly allows the transformative leap, or detour, in human evolution by augmenting existing 725

OSBORN, Kris, “Air Force chief scientist confirms F-35 will include artificial intelligence,” Defense Systems, January 20, 2017, https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/01/20/f35.aspx. 726 “Future tech? Autonomous killer robots are already here,” NBC Tech, May 16, 2014, http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/future-tech-autonomous-killer-robotsare-already-here-n105656. 727 MORRIS, David Z, “U.N. moves towards possible ban on autonomous weapons,” Fortune, December 24, 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/12/24/un-banautonomous-weapons/.

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or even creating new sentient life, curing itself via genetic engineered, and self-healing as delivered via nanorobots at fractions of the time and with exponentially greater accuracy and completeness than current human cell regeneration. If a human soldier is non-fatally wounded in the battlefield, she/he may take months to fully heal from the injury through slow cell regeneration, but almost certainly without regaining the full structure and function the wounded areas once had. AI-GNR robotic soldiers immediately upon being wounded could foreseeably have nanorobots autonomously trigger genetic-robotic healing to allow the soldier to continue combat. So if captured by the enemy, would they be prisoners of war falling under the same UN and international treaties for humane treatment, or would they simply be salvaged equipment like a jeep or a gun? The anthropology articulated in the UDBHR, explicitly supported by or implicitly compatible with the majority of the world’s states and belief systems, recognizes like Wojtyla that the human person is an integral unity of body and soul, and thus has a dignity and “moral sense” known naturally as universal unwritten law to do good and avoid evil. Humans give the genetic material for new life but the divine gives the spiritual dimension or dignity which animates and ennobles the new person. And so AI-GNR robotic soldiers to be ethically developed and deployed must have this “moral sense” built into them, but they remain extensions or tools of human persons, not persons themselves. The UDBHR examines ethical issues “with due respect to the dignity of the human person…human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Per this global bioethics standard, AI-GNR should be developed ethically, respect the permanent existential divide between man and machine, and outpace the unethical potentially cataclysmic development of it which can seek to blur this line (such as with trans-human approaches for AI to overpower human subjects particularly those in vulnerable states, i.e. overriding the known beliefs, culture, and personalities of older patients with i.e. dementia or Alzheimer’s, or in a weaponized fashion through cognitive control of a human subject). This particular protection for “defending the weakest” in Wojtyla’s conception or serving the patient in the particular vulnerability of their illness in Pellegrino’s thought parallels the UDBHR principle of protecting the autonomy of each person, as those unable to exercise it means “special measures are to be taken to protect their rights and interests” (Article 5). This brings us to the next major point about the transformative societal context of AI-GNR, having discussed the anthropological (particularly philosophical anthropological) aspects above. Human evolution has consistently demonstrated man’s violent, manipulative, and deceptive instincts for self-preservation in the context of the individual’s closely

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defined community (i.e. neighborhood, race, political party, etc.). The UDBHR advocates states should promote its enumerated bioethical principles “in the spheres of education, training and public information” (Article 22) along with the diffusion of “scientific and technological knowledge” through solidarity among states “as well as individuals, families, groups and communities” (Article 24).728 This Wojtylan echo of solidarity honors the common human dignity between persons and among peoples and proactively seeks to strengthen relational ties in the growth of virtue developing and applying such technologies as AI-GNR. Such solidarity begins with creation of such knowledge, requiring scientists to develop such values as “honesty…[and] integrity” (Article 18). This parallels Kurzweil’s argument about promoting global ethical education particularly the “values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and diversity” so AI “will reflect our values” or virtues (page 424).729 So as Wojtyla’s fellow Thomist, Austriaco, argued with the preteradaptive gifts of peace, faithful love, and knowledge, moral education for shared growth in virtue ethics is meant to serve as the ultimate transformative social movement toward optimal ethical development of technologies including AI-GNR. As the UDBHR emphasizes in its first aim, it is only meant “to provide a universal framework of principles and procedures to guide States in the formulation of their legislation, policies or other instruments in the field of bioethics” (Article 2). True global bioethical progress occurs at what Wojtyla (following Maritain and MacIntyre) identified as the intermediary organizations principally beginning with the family and extending to the local communities and world religions among other communities to foster shared virtuous development (that starts with the natural law honoring the dignity of each person and ordering her/him to the ultimate end of each person as her/his fulfillment of happiness through unity with the universal Supreme Good). The end of AI-GNR should thus be to facilitate the human end through reducing barriers toward it, such as war, poverty, and ignorance. This brings us to our final point of societal context for AI-GNR, namely the political economic. As we have discussed earlier with Brown and Duguid’s thought, ethics is not solely an academic exercise in sterile controlled laboratories—it is a dynamic, organic, complex adaptive system730 which 728

DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.” 729 Kurzweil, The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. 730 MITLETON-KELLY, Eve, “Complex adaptive systems in an organizational

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cannot be isolated from the societal factors it influences and by which it is influenced. The person is the common denominator in both spheres and must constantly act ethically in the face of continually changing ethical challenges posed by rapidly changing technologies. A prime example of the ethical and societal interplay is political economics. Since technological progress in the health sciences is primarily driven by political and economic factors, our earlier discussion of oil and healthcare examined the similarities in which geopolitics can be a stabilizing or destabilizing force as global corporations exert pressure on states to preserve their continued development, usually by seeking technological advantage and market share. With healthcare becoming one of the world’s largest economic sectors, driven primarily by the competition of growing insurance and drug companies, it is plausible to expect the healthcare sector to grow in geopolitical influence as the larger oil and automobile sectors have. AIGNR gives tremendous advantage for healthcare organizations who can generate greater profit by increasing patient demand for new derivative services, drugs, and devices, only accelerated by the additional AI level through population health management using risk stratification and cost containment to inform how to provide less resources to sicker or poorer populations and more accessibility and resources to healthier and wealthier populations who are cheaper to insure and can pay for more expensive treatments. The current cancer research industry is a poignant example of this. The major American multinational pharmaceutical companies including Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb drove a 63% increase in cancer drugs in the 10 years leading up to 2015, with annual cancer treatment costs exceeding $250,000.731 Why? Because such major players in the global healthcare sector project a capital explosion from $16.9 billion to $75.8 billion from 2015-2022 just in cancer immunotherapies, the sub-field within cancer therapies in which drugs are targeted through molecular components of the tumor or immune system. Given its more specific therapeutic targets at the molecular level and thus clinical efficacy compared to more traditional drugs at the more systemic level, it is likely that the even more specific AI-GNR technologies would drive costs with even steeper growth, and thus the health equity gap between the rich and poor.

context: Organisations as co-evolving complex adaptive systems,” (ESRC Business Processes Resource Centre, University of Warwick, 1997). 731 BEASLEY, Deena, “The cost of cancer: New drugs show success at a steep price,” Reuters, April 3, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcarecancer-costs-idUSKBN1750FU.

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Similar political economic lessons from the oil and the automobile sectors may cast light on how a UDBHR reading of AI-GNR can provide an ethical plan forward considering reality as it is. Healthcare corporations are commonly understood to be first answerable not to moral standards but to their shareholders. As just one recent example, the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services imposed a $3.1 million penalty against one of the largest insurance corporations, Humana, for systematically denying patient claims to avoid paying out legally-mandated covered benefits.732 Shifting from this intermediary community level to the state level, China is expected to remain the undisputed world leader in genetic engineered enhancements, given the government’s current aggressive funding of it (i.e. the first use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system on human embryos was funded by the state), while Western nations particularly those in North American and Europe are at least officially more concerned about human rights abuses both to current and future generations through this new technique.733 The political economic incentive for the Chinese government and Asian corporations to monopolize the even more advanced (and lucrative) AI-GNR is clear. Our prior discussion on the already ongoing AI arms race between China and the US only intensifies that for AI-GNR. Before these political economic realities, the UBHR pushes back that the “interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society” (Article 3) for both “present and future generations” (Article 2).734 Similar to Wojtyla’s argument about the primary duty of the state to safeguard the common good including indirectly through subsidiarity (Article 16),735 creating the “favorable [sic] conditions for the free exercise of economic activity” conducive for the flourishing of each person, the UDBHR emphasizes that states should thus safeguard the good of each person through “all appropriate measures” including legislatively, administratively, and educationally (Article 22). Through the “social solidarity” Wojtyla discussed as a “decisive factor” in the 1989 successful 732

MORSE, Susan, “CMS hits Humana with $3.1 million penalty for Medicare Advantage, drug plan violations,” Healthcare Finance, accessed May 18, 2017, http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/cms-hits-humana-31-millionpenalty-medicare-advantage-drug-plan-violations. 733 SCHAEFER, G Owen, “China is set to develop the first genetically enhanced ‘superhumans,’” Daily Mail, August 3, 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3721991/China-developgenetically-enhanced-superhumans-experts-predict.html. 734 DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.” 735 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Centesimus Annus.”

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non-violent revolutions overturning Communism, persons and intermediary organizations can globally through coordinated state effort unite in solidarity recognizing the dignity of each person and so oppose and prevent dangerous AI-GNR applications antithetical to human dignity by opposing and preventing such political economic societal factors that drive unethical AI-GNR development. The 1930s American migration of European scientists fleeing Hitler and his eventual Axis allies transferred the bulk of the 20th century’s global intellectual capital to the US,736 as evidenced by 12 eventual Nobel laureate scientists emigrating737 and a subsequent significant 31% leap in the post-1933 US patent rate738 and the achievement of such humanity-altering scientific events as the Manhattan project and the birth of nuclear energy (despite the eventual weaponization of that technology in the nuclear arms race). The UN became a global leader in nuclear disarmament since 1946, demonstrating the further collective power of solidarity against common threats.739 Solidarity among persons, intermediary communities, and states as outlined by the UDBHR requires unprecedented levels of international cooperation and ethical converge that the UN has demonstrated it can facilitate since its founding, above the political and economic interests of corporations and states seeking potentially deadly technological advantage over others. If the UN has led the fight against the 20th century’s greatest weapon, nuclear arms, is it not well positioned to lead the fight against the 21st century’s top weaponizable technology of AI-GNR?

5.2.2. Practical analysis To provide a practical example of applying the theoretical framework of the Wojtylan-clarified UDBHR, let us simulate a plausible scenario in the nottoo-distant future based on a current real-world example. On May 12, 2017, computer hackers utilized US National Security Agency (NSA) technology to cause what has since become a multi-billion global cyber-attack on 200,000+ computers ranging from those of the Russian Interior Ministry to Britain’s National Health Service to corporations across Asia, Europe, and 736

BERNSTEIN, Richard, “European minds who fled fascism,” The New York Times, September 23, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/europeanminds-who-fled-fascism.html. 737 ZUCKERMAN, Harriet, Scientific elite (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1977). 738 MOSER, Petra, VOENA, Alessandra, WALDINGER, Fabian, “German-Jewish emigres and U.S. invention,” The American Economic Review 104, no. 10 (October 2014): 3222–55. 739 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS, “Nuclear weapons” (United Nations, 2017), https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/.

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the US.740,741 Preliminary reports implicate North Korea hackers, similar to the state’s 2014 attack on the American Sony Corporation (for its satirical movie about North Korea’s leader), the 2016 attack on the Bangladesh central bank resulting in $81 million stolen, and the 2017 attack on 20+ Polish banks.742,743 The release of these NSA tools by a hacking group selfidentified as the Shadow Brokers has been described by a former Israeli cybersecurity intelligence officer as “equivalent to a nuclear bomb in cyberspace.” But unlike the localized damage caused by a such a bomb and the significant resources it requires, restricting the aggressor party to nuclear-capable states, such NSA tools make the cyber damage immediately global and exponentially more difficult to track and stop for “when you give a tiny little criminal a weapon of mass destruction…This will only go bigger.” Aside from the hacking code similarities and the large-scale attack suggestive of state-backed support, the modus operandi of the May 2017 attack is similar to the North Korea hacker team termed the Lazarus Group, which has been increasingly active since the 1980s throughout southeast Asian nations in teams of three to six, tasked with the dual purpose of demonstrating politically North Korean cyber-expertise and economically stealing funds. The attacks came after weeks of increased political economic sanctions by UN member nations, notably the US and China, to halt North Korea’s escalating efforts to have nuclear capabilities able to strike America. Now let us simulate the following details based upon plausible implications of the current and projected near-term capacities of AI-GNR. North Koreabacked hackers perpetuated the May 2017 cyberattacks harming nations, corporations, and health systems. And by May 2020 if international political economic pressure is continued, the hackers become increasingly desperate. The state’s leaders are ousted in a global cooperative military effort, or the entire nation is engulfed in a preemptive strike, leaving the Lazarus Group 740

PERLROTH, Nicole, SANGER, David E., “Hackers hit dozens of countries exploiting stolen N.S.A. tool,” The New York Times, May 12, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/europe/uk-national-health-servicecyberattack.html. 741 SANG-HUN, Choe, et al., “Focus turns to North Korea sleeper cells as possible culprits in cyberattack,” The New York Times, May 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/world/asia/north-korea-cyber-sleeper-cellsransomware.html. 742 PERLROT, SANGER, “Hackers hit dozens of countries exploiting stolen N.S.A. Tool.” 743 SANG-HUN, et al., “Focus turns to North Korea sleeper cells as possible culprits in cyberattack.”

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reduced to only one remaining 6-man team. No longer constrained by state control, the hacker team seeks revenge by unleashing a self-propagating AIalgorithm based on deep learning (AI programming allowing a system to learn largely without additional human input) targeting the world’s pharmaceutical and hospital computers. Upon contact, the algorithm infection spreads from the pharmaceutical computers to their automated productions systems crafting its cancer immunotherapies implanting sleeper cells within the genetic coding of the therapies to respond to a time detonation remotely. The algorithm concurrently infects hospital computers and places a sleeper detonation code. Twelve months later, the detonation is triggered within all patients who have received the immunotherapies as distributed through the hospitals. The code triggers nanorobotic sleeper components within the immunotherapy components to directly target the patient's’ genetic code for systemic cell termination. The detonation would be widespread and nearly instantaneous without treatment or a target states ability to strike in retaliation. To ensure their destructive revenge, the Lazarus Group could go further and additionally weaponize a continually changing super-bug for a globally fatal infection without cure among the nations which had placed the North Korean sanctions. Or the algorithm could just simply propagate to all personnel manning the remaining 20,000+ nuclear weapons globally, bypassing those facilities’ firewalls. The algorithm could then trigger the simultaneous firing of the missiles to assure global destruction. AI-GNR would thus be the greatest, and last invention of mankind. We will not even go into the foreseeable Singularity scenario of run-away supraintelligent AI using AI-GNR to systematically eliminate humanity with a mix of biologic and nuclear warfare, assuming states ramp up the AI-GNR arms race as an exponentially more difficult to control weapon of mass destruction. We are familiar with cyber attackers hacking computers. But what if they could hack your genetic code, scramble it with nanorobots, and be driven by a super intelligent AI not responsive to human to stop such acts? From a different perspective, try hacking physically or breaking into a Russian or American nuclear missile base. Is it not simpler to instead hack remotely into critical infrastructure and military organizations using NSAgrade cyber weapons which are much more likely to succeed, as the May 12th attacks are showing us such scenarios are not unforeseeable.

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5.3. Conclusion The previous section may seem like science fiction, but it is science and it is a factual threat given the known capacities of these technologies. The practical UDBHR application for this scenario is prevention and containment. Our historical context today is that we are entering an age of unprecedented global power over both current and future human generations with AI-GNR which is decentralized, easily weaponizable, and fundamentally effective even at the nano-level permanently rearranging the very components of our material universe. Yet the UDBHR offers an unparalleled global expression of a new political and philosophical reality, affirming a remarkable moral belief central to the hope and trust that humanity in solidarity can prevent a self-imposed extinction following the nearly apocalyptic WWII: The unique capacity of human beings to reflect upon their own existence and on their environment, to perceive injustice, to avoid danger, to assume responsibility, to seek cooperation and to exhibit the moral sense…gives expression to ethical principles744

Our earliest human records of political philosophy and philosophers-kings were the ancient Egyptian pharaohs 4000+ years ago who were tasked with protecting the people by safeguarding Maat, the god of goodness, truth, justice, and law. Through our multi-millennia history as a human species we have seen our biological and spiritual and moral evolution to the point where the evolutionary instincts are increasingly perfected through solidarity and subsidiarity by better understanding ourselves as human persons, transitioning us from primitive warring local tribes to what Wojtyla in his Thomistic personalism termed a global human family meant to create a civilization of love. Our regional legal codes have been refined to the point that they now constitute what the UDBHR defines via the natural law uniting them as “international human rights law,” originating in, ordered towards, and protected not primarily by political might but by a shared realization of our common human nature, guided by the natural law echoed in every language and peoples that human dignity should be protected through mutual safeguarding of rights and duties to allow us to flourish personally and societally. It is this common moral sense unique to our human nature which is gifted rather than manufactured from generation to generation which roots our understanding of what our earliest ancestors 744

DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.”

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understood—justice, responsibility, and cooperation in a shared commitment to the common good, ordered by the objective conception of the good. And as our African ancestors provided the earliest documented record of an objective political philosophical ordering according to truth, goodness, justice, and law, so too does the UN in the bioethical realm chiefly through the UDBHR provide a universal framework on morally converging consensus with the first universal philosophical and political agreement of the world’s nations unlike any other paradigm. True, the modern liberal social contract tradition has provided critical advances on our understanding of protecting human dignity, yet its philosophical superficiality and fundamental indefensibility following its rejection of truth along with its rejection of metaphysics (principally Thomistic-Aristotelian) requires a refinement of the UN’s foundational political philosophy by rediscovering its natural law roots in the UDHR. Aided by Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism (understanding the UN’s ethical evolution into the UDBHR and its future, while also making its objective truth claims subjectively intelligible to diverse belief systems by appealing to and being articulated according to our common human nature), we can apply this robust system as a defensible and intelligible global bioethics standard strengthened by moral and religious pluralism to our world’s most exciting and yet challenging developments. AI-GNR is chief among these. The anthropological implications of creating autonomous artificial ‘human’ life, the evolutionary forces pressuring moral regression through violent conquest with these new technologies, and political economic forces increasingly demonstrate the need for the world’s peoples and nations joined through the UN with its common updated and understood bioethical standard in the UDBHR (with need for future Thomistic personalist development) to critically examine and develop AIGNR so it can achieve the true purpose of every technology—not the liberal conception of material and temporal wealth and power over others, but the teleological common defense of the dignity of every person to flourish and so ascend the full heights of her/his humanity in all its integral dimensions “biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual.” The societal context noted above plausibly can make AI-GNR humanity’s most powerful technological evolution and thus weapon ever. The UDBHR refined by a Wojtylan understanding is strategically positioned to unite pluralist peoples to critical reflect intellectually and experientially through our common moral sense (i.e. by the natural law) to foster ethical development of these exciting capacities to harness our very biology, physio-chemistry, and intelligence in solidarity, outpacing the dangerous applications by splinters

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of individuals seeking harm for others. Consider briefly the Big Five: the world’s leading technology companies including Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon which together are worth trillions of US dollars.745 As context, the sale of just one product from one of those companies (Apple’s iPhone) exceeds the majority of the GDP of the world’s nations.746 Every one of the Big Five are racing for the most valuable technology to stay globally dominant—AI—investing collectively $60 billion annually in AI research and development which is projected to overtake the US government’s $67 billion non-defense research.747 These private corporations at least for the foreseeable near term future are not answerable to ethical standards but to their profit-focused stakeholders. Thus Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism provides a robust bridge finally from the international state level to the personal and intermediary organization level (and from modern liberal thinkers dominated by the philosophically hollow but politically popular social contract to the pre-modern robust metaphysics championed by Aquinas). This personalist contract bridge can enable the UDBHR to pragmatically and defensibly inform states on bioethical development of policies regulating AI-GNR “consistent with international human rights law” (Article 6, 9, 27)748 in a top-down approach. Yet the personalist contract can also articulate how states can respect the critical work of intermediary communities including world religions and religiously unaffiliated systems to “propose respectively” their insight into their universal conceptions of the good and “to promote, in charity, and service, the solidarity of the entire human family” from a bottom-up approach consistent with Wojtyla’s system (Article 17).749 Both levels are thus grounded and directed to the universal conception of the good, with the state possessing greater international political power and lesser understanding of 745

MANJOO, Farhad, “Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ will dominate digital life for foreseeable future,” The New York Times, January 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/technology/techs-frightful-5-will-dominatedigital-life-for-foreseeable-future.html. 746 WORLD BANK, “Gross domestic product 2015” (World Bank, 2015). 747 MANJOO, Farhad, “Google, not the government, is building the future,” The New York Times, May 17, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/technology/personaltech/google-not-thegovernment-is-building-the-future.html. 748 DECLARATION DRAFTING GROUP, “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights: Records of the General Conference.” 749 WOJTYLA, Karol, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.”

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the full conception of the good (relegated to a more general natural law conception), and intermediary communities including families and world religions possessing greater local political power and greater understanding of the full conception of the good (knowable as but not reducible to and more personally accessible in the particular as Jesus Christ, Allah, Yahweh, Nirvana, and so on). Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism fills a critical interpretive and application gap in the UDBHR (by drawing from a multimillennia tradition of Thomistic personalism and pre-modern philosophy that can embrace defensible elements of modern philosophy) at the intersection of a defensible “anthropology, ethics and law” (Article 7) to resolve the creative tension between the international and personal levels, and the individual and common good. This bridge allows the full hierarchy of human relationships to exert its fullest moral force toward the justifiable development of AI-GNR. When we first emerged as a species 200,000 years ago from the African plain, it was tribe against tribe. As we have since evolved morally and spiritually to rise above material combat rooted in animalistic fear of selfpreservation, we have converged on a shared immaterial or metaphysical mountain despite where we start at the base of it with our different cultures and belief systems. The UDBHR offers a revolutionary paradigm to harness our world’s most exciting technologies of AI-GNR by first harnessing our shared intellectual and experiential insights to build this “civilization of love” elevated from the simple passing unity of nations, and together ascending this mountain where the objective conception of the good at the summit can unite us enduringly as a common moral, and thus human family. Far from being only accessible solely by the world’s bioethics ‘experts,’ this bridge or journey is deeply experientially open to every person. The Nobelwinning French philosopher-author, Albert Camus (1913-1960 A.D.), in the play Caligula interweaved elements of Mussolini and Hitler in the composite character of the Roman emperor Caligula (12-41 A.D.), portrayed as a post-liberal Nietzschean Overman who in a calm fit of raging rebellion against his perceived meaninglessness of life realizes the limits of his capacity to generate his own meaning: “The only thing I want, Helicon, is the moon...I haven’t yet tasted everything that can keep me alive. That’s why I want the moon” (page 53).750 Unlike the tyrannical Caligula, the Greek warrior-king, Ulysses, in Dante’s portrayal will not permit his people to worship him, but rather urges them onward on their final journey to “not 750

CAMUS, Albert, Caligula: A drama in two acts (New York, NY: Samuel French, 1961).

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deny/ experience of that which lies beyond / you were not made to live your lives as brutes / but to be followers of worth [Latin: virtute or ‘virtue’] and knowledge” (26.118-120)751 For Dante’s Ulysses, God the Supreme Good who makes life intelligible and meaningful was not dead. Yet even Ulysses, a descendent of the first man, Adam, follows his human father in his fearful distrust of this God sought “the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9) as his own creation of discovery.752 The overmen so shrank in fear and thus violence from the unknown—yet our prototypical mythical voyager before and within us beckons us onward and upward toward true knowledge of the good, not for our own sake but for others in the common good, as love of each other replaces the fear in us, and thus that love binds and beckons us onward to claim the summit together. As we have traveled back multi-disciplinarily through our profoundly rich common human heritage—with anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, and theology—we have come across Rawls, Camus, Nietzsche, Locke, Descartes, Caligula, Ulysses, and Adam among many others, all seeking God-like knowledge but many without God but on their own terms—peace without justice, freedom without responsibility, arguments without truth. Their discoveries provide us key insights to delve deeper into humanity’s moral evolution from “brutes” to “followers of worth [virtue] and knowledge,” but on paths man climbs but does not create, facing challenges like AI-GNR as gifts for rather than weapons against others. The UDBHR and Wojtyla’s Thomistic personalism uniquely allow us to interpret and apply a common and defensible moral language to such challenges with unique rigor and intelligibility in a way that unites divergent cultural and belief systems as different paths up a mountain are united in their singular end which orders their shared direction of upwards. In the first 200 millennia of our common existence, we could only rebel against truth, freedom, and our own dignity and against that of others through violence, manipulation, and deceit—which were kept in check by our progressively developed moral sense and unity as a human family. Now with AI-GNR, we can rebel not only against our moral but also material universe. Now more than ever we need a politically unifying and philosophically compelling paradigm as the UDBHR social contract-like system with its unique natural law and personalist foundation explained by Wojtyla which therefore allow us to face such challenges together and arrive not at Godlike knowledge and power, but knowledge and ‘philo-sophia’ or true love 751

DANTE, The inferno. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New American Bible Revised Edition.

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of wisdom (of each other and thus of this God), understood in the crescendo of pluralistic conceptions of this good as converging consensus of states, intermediary communities including families and world religions, and persons. Perhaps it is by going back to our origins that we can look forward to our ultimate end and so prevent our self-annihilation. Perhaps by reclaiming our original moral code naturally inscribed on our hearts that we can reclaim and unite our pluralistic voices in a common symphony, each belief system as another instrument enhancing rather than extinguishing the other in this great millennia-old human orchestra. And perhaps it is by reclaiming our humanity, we can understand what human intelligence is and thus what ethical artificial intelligence should be. Socrates, Ulysses, and Oppenheimer stood before the blinding unknowable, men struck blind and dumb at the base of a seemingly insurmountable metaphysical mountain where the good dominated the feebleness of mankind's capacities. The sun over the Platonic cave, Heaven higher than even the Ulyssean Mountain of Purgatory, global peace elusive beyond the destructive nuclear flash of the Oppenheimer atomic weapon—following and concurrent with the Cartesian modern turn of man away from this mountain, denying the unknowable by denying one's humanity to make modern man her/his own god (by shrinking from such great and human the task of ascending the heights of humanity to the divine that draws and guides each person). By artificially limiting the known universe to liberal constructions of rationality reducing reality solely to material scientific truths and shallow philosophical constructs, modern man became the king of his little sandbox, with the strong still subjugating the weak, no closer to the imponderable good pre-modern man sought. This work has sought to make the next modern turn back to the mountain, back to our origins in all its extravagant biological, anthropological, philosophical and theological richness to thus allow us to rediscover our ends. Or in the words of T.S. Eliot, “With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling / ...the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time. / Through the unknown, unremembered gate.”753 This work has sought to simply demonstrate the urgency to understand the cataclysmic implications of AI-GNR, the failure of the liberal social contract ethics alone to address them, and the unifying soundness of natural law to do just that by establishing the anthropological consistency, political 753

ELIOT, T.S., Little Gidding.

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effectiveness, and philosophical robustness of a Thomistic personalist foundation birthing a defensible UDBHR and UDHR-detailed human rights and duties structure. This universal conception of the good which gives global voice to the unifying moral language of the natural law operating within each belief system precisely and uniquely can serve as the map facilitating the ascent of the world's peoples up their richly diverse paths up the mountain, but all passing by way of the “unknown, unremembered gate,” the direction of upwards, “Not known, because not looked for / But heard, half-heard, in the stillness / Between two waves of the sea.”754 In this quiet whispering in every human heart, in every land, in every age, the quiet sound of the sea of humanity's thirst for the infinite, to possess and be possessed by the truth of this beautiful good which gently tugs as the tide pulling mankind's boats out to the unchartered waters, but with the truth of the good acting as the sure guide safely to, and up that mountain. And there on that mountain, “All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flames are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one.”755 This is not a utopian vision, nor a suicide mission. Unlike a Ulysses-like social contract sailing into the unknown, this Eliot-like ascent with the sure Wojtylan guide of Thomistic personalism can point the way forward for the fleets of the world, for every community, and every person. It is a descriptive and prescriptive understanding of humanity's continued and (hopefully) inevitable moral evolution toward peace through justice, toward the just society through the demands of mercy, toward the fulfillment of the liberal social contract's hope for global unity through the Thomistic personalist defense of metaphysical and thus lasting moral and political justice through love. It is the inner thirst to ascend together out of the Platonic cave and up that metaphysical mountain where humanity's diverse cultural and belief communities can converge at the summit, at the objectively defined and subjectively experienced truth of the beautiful Supreme Good—where the enlightening Divine fiery sun giving life to the frail but free beauty of the human rose “are one”.756

754

Ibid. Ibid. 756 Ibid. 755

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