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4.0étoiles sur 5
Clear questions, not so clear answers., Mai 26 2002
In this small volume two of the best-known minds of Italy exchange letters trying to find a common ground and to clarify differences between the secular and religious worldviews. On the one hand we have Umberto Eco, an academic philosopher best known for his novel "The Name of the Rose", and on the other hand Cardinal Martini, one of the most intellectually gifted princes of the Catholic church. The format is questions and answers; Eco gets the first three questions, Martini the last one. In general I found the questions illuminating; they are clearly stated and challenge the other party to clarify its position. Neither Eco nor Martini give resounding answers though, and reading between the lines one feels a certain unease in both.Eco's first question is not really a question but rather a commentary on the secular and religious ideas about history and the end of history. Both agree that history has meaning and direction and that the fears about a disastrous end can be vanquished by hope. The other three questions are ethical and are much more interesting. After a short and delightful investigation about what human life is, Eco asks about abortion, and specifically about when human life begins. Martini explains that there are different kinds of human life and that the kind that counts is not physical life but rather spiritual life which is part of God's life. Being a cardinal, he cannot but answer Eco's question with the Church's official position, which is that human life begins at inception. He reasons that this is so because at the inception a person's genetic identity is fixed. To me this argument sounds rather superficial. After all a seed fixes the identity of the tree that may grow out of it, but that does not mean that the seed is a living tree. Surely, if, while eating an apple, I inadvertently swallow a seed, nobody will claim that I have just eaten an apple tree. To be fair, Martini is only stating that human life starts at inception, not that a fertilized human egg is a human being. But in this case then we get the equally strange claim that human life is present in something that is not a human being. The third of Eco's questions is about the ordination of women. He argues that there are not really any dogmatic impediments for women becoming priests and, also, that common sense dictates that half of humanity should not be excluded from serving God in any capacity. Martini's answer here is very problematic. He starts on a fine note stating that we should not impose our morality on others: "Any external imposition of principles or religious behavior on the nonconsenting violates freedom of conscience." Exactly two paragraphs later he contradicts himself writing that "religious bodies can try to democratically influence the tenor of laws they find do not correspond to an ethical standard that might indeed derive from religious practice". He concedes that ultimately there are no good arguments for denying the priesthood to women, but that nevertheless this must be denied them because it is God's will, according to the opinion of those "who by Episcopal succession have received the power of truth". The fourth and final question is Martini's, and now I think it is Eco's answer that sounds strained. Martini asks what the foundation is for an atheist's moral principles, up to documented extremes where atheists gave up their lives trying to do what they thought right. Implicitly in this question one reads the presumption that the foundation of morality can only be a transcendent religious awareness. Eco starts, interestingly enough, explaining that there can be no true atheists because even though nobody has found a convincing proof for the existence of God, neither has anybody found a convincing proof for the nonexistence of God. He responds to Martini's question explaining that moral ideology is a result of the requirements of our cohabitation in close proximity. He recognizes that this standard explanation for morality does not explain the phenomenon of secular people offering a personal sacrifice comparable to that of Christ, so he ventures that the reason here is that people have a deep need to give a good example, to leave a message to others, sometimes even if it costs their life. He does not explain how this instinctive need to communicate good has evolved with human life and culture, so he is merely transforming the original question into a different one. Ultimately, Eco and Martini do not really connect, and it would be too much to expect such a miracle. I think that the religious and secular world views can only touch and derive worth from each other if each side abandons beliefs that are deeply felt but not really central to the respective world views. Secular people should stop talking about "meaningful life", "universal harmony", a "higher power", or "the other" and simply give it a name and call it God. Religious people should recognize that the origin of truth is not in books of revelations or leaders who "have received the power of truth" but God alone with no intermediaries. When secular people accept that truth comes from somewhere, and religious people accept that where truth comes from we can go ourselves, then the foundations of a very meaningful dialectic will have been set. One star less than the deserving five, because the English edition omits the commentaries by several other authors which were included in the original edition.
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