Download KAUSALITÄT UND MOTIVATION BEI EDITH STEIN

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ETHICS OF THE RENOVATION IN HUSSERL
Urbano FERRER
Husserl is a worried witness of a series of symptoms of acute spiritual
crisis in Europa in the part of XX Century in which he lived: they are
aproximately the same motives that had led Oswald Spengler to refer to the
decline of the West or H. Arendt to delve into the origins and nature of the
totalitarianisms or Ortega y Gasset to write The revolt of the masses. What
ended in the bloodiest wars in history, had not escaped the sharp look of those
thinkers with regard to the widespread antisemitism in Europe or the quick
establishment of the Soviet and Nacionalsocialist totalitarianisms or the
economic crash which followed the Great War after years of apparent prosperity
or also the rupture of old social and polítical structures. What had this critical
situation to do with the cultural lag –in the words of the norteamerican
sociologist W. F. Ogburn– between natural-scientific advancements and their
technological application, on the one hand, and the slow awakening of cultural
factors, on the other? Was not the crisis in the same line with the failed attempts
to found the Sciences of the Spirit –since undertaken by Dilthey–, in such a way
that they were not behind in the accuracy and precision of the Sciences of
Nature? At beginning of his article of 1911 Philosophy as strict Science,
published in Logos, Husserl contrasts the stuttering situation of the Sciences of
the Spirit with the firm progression of the Physico-mathematical Science since
Euclidean Geometry, where even the foundational crises –specially significant
in the contemporary Age–, far from being paralyzing, had offered new
possibilities in Geometry and the Physical Sciences in general.
However the search for parallelism between both forms of knowledge is
flawed, if we thereby seek to confirm exact explanatory laws in the sphere of the
Sciences of the Spirit. Already W. Dilthey had contrasted natural explanation to
historical understanding, although later he tried to resolve the second one in
final units of psycological character, that lost the specificity of human deeds. For
Husserl what distinguishes the human is being under the sign of the normative
judgement and hence the responsibility for what is judged by the agent. If one
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disregards the valorative engagement, the judged subject is stagnated as if it
were a dense fact, opaque to all rational penetration.
In his words: “Doch auf geisteswissenschaftlicher Seite handelt es sich
nicht wie bei der Natur um bloße rationale „Erklärung“. Hier tritt noch eine ganz
eigentümliche Art der Rationalisierung des Empirischen auf: die normative
Beurteilung nach allgemeinen Normen, die zum apriorischen Wesen der
‘vernünftigen’ Humanität gehören, und die Leitung der tatsächlichen Praxis
selbst nach ebensolchen Normen, zu denen die Vernunftnormen praktischer
Leitung selbst mitgehören”1.
Or in other paragraph: “Doch wie immer, in dieser naturtechnischen
Sphäre des menschlichen Handeln ermöglichte Wissenschaft eine wahre
praktische Rationalität, und sie gab die vorbildliche Lehre, wie Wissenschaft
überhaupt zur Leuchte der Praxis werde müsse. Aber an einer rationaler
Wissenschaft vom Menschen und der menschlichen Gemeinschaft, welche eine
Rationalität im sozialen, im politischen Handeln und eine tationale politische
Technik begründen würde, fehlt es duchaus”2.
All this brings to light the affirmative response to the question posed
earlier: The contemporary human crises are seen by Husserl as crises of a
humanistic knowledge at the level of this time, insofar as this knowledge
includes responsibility for leading humanity according to a priori normative
goals. Therefore it is not strange, if without an apriori normativity justice
degenerates into mere ruled procedure, freedom subverts into emancipation with
no bearings and Science becomes a routine technic, to give somes examples of
the western crisis. Precisely Ethics appears in a frame of essencial
considerations about man, such that bring into line the mentioned notions among
others.
1. Conditioned imperatives and unconditioned moral imperative
The diverse human activities and professions are specified by their
corresponding guideline ends, which establish the difference between right and
wrong, the suitable and the unsuitable… But it is a conditional or subordinate
normativity, since one enters its area only with the condition that someone has
1
HUSSERL, E., Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922-1937), Nenon, Th, Sepp, H.R. (hrsg.), Husserliana XXVII,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1989, p. 7.
2
o.c., p. 6.
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opted for such an activity and, once performed, it is allways possible to unfold
other activities which fall under other normativities. It seems that such
imperatives would have to be hypothetical in the Kantian sense, insofar as they
depend on an end that is not absolutely adscribed to the human acting und
wanting. However this first approach is not definitive in order to distinguish
between conditioned imperatives and unconditioned moral imperative. This is
what I seek to show below.
Strictly we are not before two classes of yuxtaposed imperatives nor they
are anyway extrinsecally related. It is sufficient for seeing it to realize that the
laws of right and wrong already concern the acts of the will with their essential
orientation to what is good, even in a restricted order. Thus the commands
proper to a determinate sphere of behaviour are origin of responsibility or, in a
negative way, it would be irresponsible to give them up once they have been
assumed. In other words: without the ethical normativity of duty all other
normativity would remain conventional or ficticious. In inverse terms: accepting
an imperative for behaviour without inserting oneself simultaneously in the
ethical normativity means assuming a normativity which is contrary to the
ethical one and consists of turning the relative into the absolute, since the
responsibility for leading a life according to reason is something constitutive for
man. In the words of Husserl: “Alle als positiv zu bewertenden Lebensformen
können für den Menschen, der sich auf die Stufe des ethischen erhoben hat, nur
dadurch wertvoll bleiben, dass sie sich in die ethischen Lebensformen einordnen
und in ihr nicht nur eine weitere Formgebung, sondern auch die Norm und
Grenze ihres letzten Rechtes gewinnen”3.
But before going on let us sheed light on the apparently paradoxical
meaning of the expression “uncondicioned imperative”. Indeed as imperative, it
could be applicable only to a conditioned being, who is at odds with that which
is not in conformity with its dictates: it is only in this regard that the imperative
appears; but as unconditional the imperative seems to designate what is already
established or decided, without admiting additional modulation by virtue of new
demands. If the Kantian categorical or unconditioned imperative succeds in
reconciling both sides, it is because it limits itself to being the universal form of
the will, repeatedly present in all volontary acts. But it is not the case in
Husserlian Ethics, where the due act of the will is based on the differential
axiological content and its later deliberative analysis, which lead it to adhere to
the best in the situation, and not merely what is wanted according to an apriori
3
o.c., p. 29.
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need of the wanting. The Husserl’s formula of the categorical imperative reflects
it so: “act according to the best knowledge and conscience”. And as both the
best knowing and the best conscience are something which is acquired with
moral experience, the unconditioned means here an inalienable guideline for
acting, since it involves reason, whose judgements strive towards truth, and it
does not mean a merely formal universale law with which the maximes of acting
had to be measured.
But if Husserl’s categorical imperative is not an abstracte law, how can
it be about an apriori of Reason, and as such unconditioned? Is it not
contradicted by the fact that its commands need the sieve of experience,
specially if affectivity has its part in this experience? It is time to bring in the
phenomenological notion of fulfilment, which appears in diverse orders.
Fulfilment applies to the promise, not as an additional eventuality, but as the
satisfaction of a requirement, which is a priori implicit in the act of promise. It is
also said in the sphere of knowledge of a meaning when this is satisfied or
fulfilled by the corresponding intuition. Analogously, a feeling of joy gains
fulfilment when the joyful state of things which justifies it enough is present.
The opposite of fulfilment is disillusion, as that which from fair away seemed to
be a waving lady becomes a dammy, as I approche, or when the striving joy
does not find confirmation in the adequate state of things. Thus fulfilment has a
journey which ends in evidence, or, what is equivalent, comes out in the telos
which brings to end expectation founded in it.
There is no contradiction in general terms in that the a priori is reached
with experience when this experience means the progressive fulfilment of a
prescribed teleological demand. This is common to the given examples of the
binding promise, of the presumption which needs sufficient basis for becoming
evidence or of the qualitative feeling, which calls for a valuable adequate
quality. What makes the terms acquired in the course of the experience apt for
supplying fullness to the performative act, to the search for knowledge or to the
affective stance, is that they guarantee the teleological fulfilment, demanded a
priori in each one of the examples above. But how can we extend this notion to
the field of moral praxis?
I considere that here lies Husserl’s contribution to the Ethics.
Teleological fulfilment prevents two opposite extremes. On the one hand, it is
not about judging an isolate action –which is prevailing in classic approach–, but
neither –at the opposite extreme – is it about avoiding the action as such by
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ressorting to the underlying legal form or to the effects and consequences of the
action; what mainly matters is to links the action with the motives, the stance
and the intention, since the action fulfils them and confirms their truth. The
moral judgement falls on the motivation, the stance or the guiding intention, but
not as if these were the definitive, insofar as with them a impletive process is
initiated and this in confirmated only once the motivated actions are reached.
Moral is so inserted in the biography where the acting is inscribed, and in turn
continues in the following biographical stages which give it fulfilment. Thus
duty –formulable in uncondicional imperative –does not lie in a separate and
ideal realm, alien to the experience, but by means of essential connection of the
stances, motivations and intentions with their respectives correlates manages to
link up a priori and normatively with the actions held as due. As Husserl says:
“Ethische Gesetze sind keine Sachgesetze für das Handeln, sonst gäbe es ja kein
anderes Handeln, als sie fordern; sie reichen vielmehr über bloß empirische oder
apriorische Gesetze für wirkliche oder ideal mögliche Zusammenhänge der
Natur hinaus, da sich nicht das Sein der Handlungen als Sachen regeln, sondern
Normen eines Sollens abgeben”4.
Notwithstanding, if the formula “uncondicional imperative” has some
difficulties, it is because the term “imperative” in its application to morality is in
some way imprecise. Indeed, if the first ethical funcion is the enjudgement by
reason, then the performance of the action in itself or materially considered –
which is the only thing that can be impered– is not moral, but only insofar as it
conforms with the corresponding judgement and is guided by it. So language
distinguishes between killing as physical action and murdering as intencional
action or between taking away own possesions as description of an event and
stealing as immoral action. Good, evil and analogous moral attributes appear in
a preceptive act of judging and in this way can leave room for the subject to
decide his acting freely, who turns moral judgement into directive of his
behaviour. All –so called– moral imperative derives from the adequatness of the
attribut “good” to certain typ of action and this entails responsibility of reason.
But Husserl also draws some corollaries. First an approving (or
disapproving) moral judgement can be ratified (or revised) in a later judgement,
provided that there are sufficients motives supplied by the moral experience.
What at one stage of the personal development and in certain context turned out
appropiate, becomes at a wide vision of life unnecessary or even inconvenient,
4
ROTH, A., Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1960, p. 34 (taken
of Husserl’s Manuscripts).
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in such a way that before it would still not have reached complete fulfilment.
Thus we say sometimes “I ratify what I already stated” or on the contrary “today
from my acquired perspective I don’t judge it so”. What is now called into
question is not the highst ethical principles –in connection with synderesis–, but
their material application, limited to variable external and psycological
conditions.
Another consequence of this approach is that the moral acompasses the
whole life in its biographical trajectory and not only in one or another defined
and in themselves concluded actions. As the ethical imperative is directed
towards the best, the decided action is always open to its improvement, far from
any stagnation in the will. But with this we are close to the central of his article,
which is what Husserl understands by renovation as expression of moral growth
for the individual and the community. What are the implicits of this notion?
2. Ethical and cultural renovation
In a first sense renovation is to put something ex novo or, we can also
say, renovation lies in every act of will, insofar as the will essentially adresses
something which is to be done or, in the words of Husserl, insofar as volontary
act means a creative fiat (this term was taken from Principles of Psychology of
W. James). This implies that such act does not derive necessarily from the
previous representative acts, but neither does it from a desire (Begehren) in
which it were pre-contained, although the passive layer of the will has its part.
Rather wanting as intencional act is fulfiled in the action, to which it points and
in which is straightforwardly performed without representative or axiological
mediation aside from the general idea of the wanted and its inclusion in the
desiderable or in the channels leading to it. This wanting is renewing in the
sense that it initiates itself the process of its performance and carries it out to end
or stops it. Whereas desire is clairfied gradually until its fulfilment as desire,
there is not an intentional correlate of the wanting which is clairfied beyond
something desiderandum (wünschenswert), but the wanting is extended itself in
the intencional or finaliste realization, which itself marks or gives unity. But
how do we go from the innovation introduced by the act of the will to
renovation?
Indeed the term “renovation” is usually applied in the transitive sense
of renewing something already given und expired. Without excluding this
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meaning, here it is taken more radically, insofar as it refers to the subject who
renews himself. This sense has certain analogy in the biological order with the
living beings, which depend on the constant renovation of their celles and
tissues for their survival. We can say that just as biological life is self-making,
so biographical life is in active living. But what disitnguishes the second is that
it is being driven by an identical personal I, whose renovation stems from
singular free acts becoming habitual directions of his wanting, it is to say, actual
and possible volitions, and so he modifies himself according to them. The propre
ethical imperative includes the habituality in its formulation. “Also darauf
kommt es an, dass nicht naiv, zufällig, ohne Normgewissheit, sondern eben im
strengsten Sinn ‘nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen’ das Beste erwählt und
getan ist, und dass dieses ‘nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen’ aus dem einen,
das ethische Leben ein für alle Mal stiftenden Willen hervogegangen und zum
habituell leitenden kategorischen Imperativ des ganzen Lebens geworden ist”5.
Thus the moral is not a limited area of acting, but the whole
biographical life is comprehended in the moral direction. In this way the more or
less near ends of the acts link together in a teleological series until reaching the
last end, which underlies and bestows them unity. In this regard renovation
would mean the substitution of some ends by others within the common
orientation to the unifying end; in contrast, the lack of renovation would lie in
setting up immediate ends as the only express ones without mentioning the
transcendent end, in which those are sustained and which is the only suitable one
for completely satisfying the wanting (eine totale Befriedigung). As Husserl
comments: “Er mag also als ethisch zentriertes Ich auf die Zweckidee habituell
hingerichtet sein und bleiben –während es sich doch, sei es momentan oder in
längeren Zeitstrecken, von ‘äußeren Affektionen’ fortreißen läßt und ‘sich an
die Welt verliert’”6. Habitus obviously has here the active connotation of
something that guides and reactivates the single acts, and not the passive sense
of that which has settled in the consciousness after previous realizations, like a
determinate style or a conviction proceeding from the adoption of certain
judgements (Husserl calls these passive habitus “Habitualitäten”).
But renovation also means man rising time and time again from the
fallen or imperfect state from which he starts and to which drifts. “Sofern das
ethische Leben seinem Wesen nach Kampf ist mit den ‘herabziehenden
5
HUSSERL, E., Einleitung in die Ethik. Vorlesungen Sommermester 1920 und 1924, Hus. XXXVII,
Dordrecht/Boston/Londres: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, p. 253.
6
HUSSERL, Aufsätze und Vorträge…, p. 38.
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Neigungen’, kann es auch als eine kontinuierliche Erneuerung beschrieben
werden. Im besonderen Sinn erneuert sich der in ‘ethische Knechtschaft’
verfallene Mensch durch radikale Besinnung und Inkraftsetzung des
ursprünglichen und kraftlos gewordenen ethischen Lebenswillens bzw. durch
Neuvollzug der inzwischen geltungslos gewordenen Urstiftung”7. From this
angle renovation appears as a continuous and necessary fight, since as soon as it
is abandoned the relapse to the initial state becomes unavoidable. Augustinus’
principle that fixation in moral life is not possible resounds: “Always move on.
If you say it is enough, you are lost”8. It is certainly true that in Husserl this
principle has a reformist bias of Lutherean origin, although it does not reach the
excesses of irredeemed prostration in the original sin, as in Luther and Kant,
which would go against the moral eagerness of renovation put forward by the
Husserlian ethical imperative.
In a more restrictiv sense the recapitulation of the will returns also to
the partial goods pursues and straightens them according to higher ends than
those proposed before. We could say that no intention is born already straight,
insofar as it is set up on the passive impulses and the spontaneous tendencies,
but it must straighten itself according to the universal good, to which the will is
open through the mediation of the active I. The semantic active-passive
ambiguity of the term want, apt to designate both mere inclination and
affirmative wanting, is symptomatic. In Husserl’s words: “In der letzten
Hinsicht erwachsen solche Entwertungen in der peinlichen Erkenntnis, das
erzielte ‘Gute’ sei nur ein vermeintliches Gutes; die ihm gewidmete Arbeit sei
also eine nutzlose, die Freude daran eine sinnlose gewesen, und danach eine
solche, die hinfort nicht mehr zur Glücksummedes bisherigen Lebens gerechnet
werden dürfe”9. Thus the aspiration to perfection is not reached in medias res,
but by overcoming resistences and obstacles and by re-examinating oneself in
the light of the principle that all partial goods attained have to be integrated in a
higher good (law of summation), in correlation with the unique and lasting
satisfaction which the voluntary I yearns for unitarily. In negative way: the
maximum good for man is not the sum of individual and ephemeral pleasures,
lived in disconnected moments, since it refers to life in its totality.
It should be noted how in this approach the historicity of culture is
surreptitiously introduced, to the extent that the renovation is also applicable to
7
o.c., p. 43.
San Agustín, Sermon 169, 18.
9
o.c., p. 32.
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it. Culture is integrated by the external works of man, which are elargeable
limitelessly by virtue of the renewing effort, but also culture belongs the man
propre, insofar as man is not defined naturally, as occurs in animal species.
History of culture is the history of variable realizations of man in the horizontal
sense that they are documentable in external results and they ride some on the
top of others that have gone before. Culture is besides the primordial place of
man’s insertion in the community. “Also wirkliches Menschheitsleben ist
seinem Wesen nach Kulturleben, und soweit es das nicht ist, ist der Mensch
noch Tier und seinem Wesen nach emporstrebend von niederen zu immer
höheren Vernunftformen”10. This serves as our link with the communitary Ethics
of the renovation. Let us see it.
In the sistematic context of Husserl the culture, being open to the
plurality of its forms, is inscribed in the teleological process striving for
evidence. Thus it has a dynamic fonction, which is valide only in the sense that
approaches through models and relevant institutionalizations the moral
realization by means of rational and free behaviour. In this way pluriform
expressions can find course in culture, so avoiding the uniformity of abstract
reason. In contrast, if it gets stuck in standard forms against the ideal of
renovation, it ceases to contribute to the crystallization of the universality of the
ethical will and goes back to he isolation and incommunication of individuals
and particular groups. As we saw above when talking of the specific jobs and
techniques that cannot unfold if they are not impregnated by the moral ideal of
perfection, which affords sense to the duty of the particular ends, so now the
various cultural expressions are acknowledged as human solely in that they are
penetrated by the humanizing process of reason and the forging of the ethical
personality. In this sense the semantic relation of culture with “colere”, cultivate,
grow is sympthomatic, since this verb can be applied to the moral germs too.
With Husserl’s words: “Er selbst ist dann zugleich Kultursubjekt und
Kulturobjekt; und wieder ist er zugleich Kulturobjekt und Prinzip aller
Kulturobjekte. Denn alle echte Kultur ist nur durch echte Selbstkultur in ihrem
normgebenden ethischen Rahmen möglich”11.
What, specifically, are the moral attitudes that are opened culturally?
Husserl lists some. Obviously the family is a universal institution, which is
necessary for the moral growth of man. Therefore it is pervaded with culture and
Ethics, for in it the cultural incorporation to a language and to some pattern of
10
11
o.c., p. 99.
o.c., pp. 41-42.
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behaviour take place, as well as carrying out the sozialization at the first levels;
but no less obviously individuals acquire therein the ethical esteem of
themselves and learn moral virtues –solidarity, selfcontrol, sacrifice,
neighbourly love–, which will have to be exerciced later and fitted in public
framework. This is possible on account of its great proximity to the persons. But
in other communities where there is no such proximity and so persons are
mutually anonymous to a certain extent, we find also a differentiated cultural
unit, through which moral virtues open up. Husserl shows it with regard to the
consolidation of the nation, insofar as it substitutes initial mistrust and hostility
towards neighbouring communities by ethical attitudes which are universally
transfereable from the initial practice of the common national project. “Manche
menschliche Tugenden der Freundlichkeit, Redlichkeit, Gerechtigkeit u.s.w.
lösen sich aber von der heimischen Formung durch Sitte als ein menschliches
Kern ab, der bei ganz verschiedenen Nationen sich immer wiederfindet, als ein
allgemeinschliches ‘gesitteter’ Völker”12.
However Husserl finds the synthesis between ethical universality and
cultural differentiation in Europe from its origins in Classical Greece, where the
ideal of a life according to Reason took shape, along with its later enshrinement
in Roman Law and the new sap of Christianity with its unconditional respect for
the dignity of the person. The European unity is not founded on any ethnic
group or on any principle of cultural diferentiation, but on the universal will of
de conducirse behaving according to the ideal of perfection in individuals and in
particular communities, which even have the capacity of self-criticism with
regard to the times when their behaviour has, in fact, fallen short of this ideal,
and so they can practice moral renovation. With these assumptions one can
understand what I have called in other papers universal vocation or European
implantation in other continents, provided that the peculiarities of the indigenous
cultures are respected and promoved equality, as has happened with the peoples
that live within Europe (unfortunately, the European culture has not allways
been up to its vocation). Husserl refers to it: “Das meint nichts minderes, als…
dass wir in der europäischen Kultur die erste Verwirklichung einer absoluten
Entwicklungsnorm sehen, die dazu berufen ist, jede andere sich entwickelnde
Kultur zu revolutionieren. Denn eine jede in der Einheit einer Kultur lebende
und sich entwickelnde Menschheit
steht unter einem kategorischen
Imperativ”13.
12
HUSSERL, E., Krisis II. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934-1937, Husserliana XXIX,
Dordrecht/Boston/Londres: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993, pp. 42-43.
13
Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922-1937, p. 73.
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3. Renovation in communities as ethical subjects
In the above it is implicit that the will of renovation is necessary not
only in individuals or persons in a strict sense, but there are also collective
subjects as moral persons in growth. “Das aber in wirklicher Analogie zum
wirklichen Leben verstanden. Ebenso wie dieses wäre es also ein Leben der
‘Erneuerung’, aus dem eigenen Willen heraus geboren, sich selbst zu einer
echten Menschheit im Sinne praktischer Vernunft, also ihre Kultur zu einer ‘echt
humanen’ Kultur zu gestalten”14. More precisely: it is not about two typs of
parallel renovations, but the collective renovation is founded in individual
persons, deriving ethical features of the collectivities from individuals which
comprise them. The reason is that only in these do they acquire consciousness of
themselves and the sameness through their varying acts of knowledge, esteem
and volitions. Some of these acts are performed not as individuals, but as
members of the community they represent, in which they coincide with the other
members. Therefore it makes sense to say that the community, as a project of
life in common, is motivated to act in such a sense or that it has decided to do
this or that, and we say that in the moral order one community or another has
achieved this or that success, it is alive, that it has its own ethos... In no way are
we before a simple sum or result of individual wills, but on these a collective
will is built, in whose name the particular members act and uphold it. “(Sie) ist
da keine Vielheit, sondern eine in der Vielheiten fundierte Einheit, und sie ist
Substrat für Akte als Akteinzelheiten und für sie bleibende Akte, Akte, die selbst
konstitutive Einheiten höherer Stufe sind, die ihre fundierenden Unterstufen in
den betreffenden einzelpersonalen Akten haben… (Sie) hat Überzeugungen,
Wünsche, Willensentschlüße, sie vollzieht Handlungen, ebenso ein Verein, ein
Volk, ein Staat. Und auch von Vermögen, von Charakter, von Gesinung usw.
können wir in strengen, aber entsprechend höherstufigen Sinn reden”15.
The acts in which community is constituted and thrives are the so called
social acts, not only directed to the other, but are also two-way on the basis of
the world of life, perceived in common; these social acts are also called
performative acts. Thus the acts of the community never prevent or invade the
personal acts in which they are founded, but rather their weight falls finally and
wholly on individuals. In words of Husserl, “eine universale Willensverbindung
14
15
O.c., p. 22.
ZPhI, II, p. 201.
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da, die Willenseinheit herstellt, ohne daß eine imperialistische
Willensorganisation da ist, ein zentraler Wille, in dem sich alle Einzelwillen
zentrieren, dem sie sich alle willig unterordnen und als dessen Funktionäre die
einzelnen sich wissen”16. In another order of considerations Charles Taylor
distinguishes between individual, socially convergent (e.g. wellfare or public
safety), and common goods, exceeding zero-sum games because they are
essentially communitary. And just as the latter do not cancel out the individuals,
but include them as beneficiaries from a broader radius, neither is it apropiate to
say that collective wills displace individual wills for their resting on them.
Rather, these individual wills are the sole effective subjects of acts, however
much those representative of the community may be included among them.
Mediante la comunidad se abren a los individuos unas posibilidades de
perfeccionamiento de las que por sí solos eran incapaces. Y cada una de las
comunidades se caracteriza por unos fines diferenciales en orden a la realización
de los individuos, desde aquellas en las que estos originariamente están hasta
aquellas otras en las que ingresan por adscripción voluntaria. En su obra
Metaphisik der Gemeinschaft emprendió Hildebrand una tipología de las
comunidades que amplía las consideraciones husserlianas. En su alcance más
alto se encuentra la comunidad omniabarcante de la Humanidad en general, no
entendida como una totalidad abstracta o como un género lógico, sino como
integrada realmente por todos los seres humanos sobre la base de un ideal
común de perfección, al que no es ajeno ninguno de los logros alcanzados por
las distintas actividades humanas parciales ni por otras comunidades más
restringidas. Esta noción tiene su antecedente más próximo en el ideal de la
Ilustración, tal como lo hace valer, por ejemplo, Kant en La paz perpetua
refiriéndose al orden jurídico, pero en Husserl representa ante todo un programa
de superación moral para los sujetos individuales y colectivos pertenecientes a la
Humanidad. Así lo refleja en textos como el siguiente: “Es gehört also zu
meinem echt menschlichen Leben, dass ich nicht nur mich als Guten, sondern
die gesamte Gemeinschaft als eine Gemeinschaft Guter wünschen und, soweit
ich kann, in meinen praktischen Willens–, Zweckkreis nehmen muß. Ein wahrer
Mensch sein ist ein wahrer Mensch wollen und beschließt in sich, Glied einer
‘wahren’ Menschheit sein wollen oder die Gemeinschaft, der man angehört, als
eine wahre wollen, in den Grenzen praktischer Möglichkeit”17.
16
17
Aufsätze und…, p. 53.
O.c., p. 46.
13
Queda la cuestión del término de referencia hacia el que se encamina y
por el que se orienta la perfección moral. Ha de ser, sí, un ideal de perfección
moral, pero a la vez estando más allá de las personas que pugnan por llegar a él,
quedándoles fuera de su alcance. Así es como se incoa desde la argumentación
moral la noción de Persona divina, como la de aquel Ser que desborda
infinitamente las posibilidades humanas sin por ello dejar estas de aproximarse
crecientemente a él. Pensemos, por ejemplo, en la síntesis entre justicia y
misericordia, que sólo imperfectamente puede ser realizada por el hombre en su
avance moral. En este aspecto el símil geométrico de la hipérbola, que se acerca
asintóticamente al límite sin llegar nunca a él, le sirve a Husserl de ilustración.
“Gehen wir hier bis an die ideale Grenzen, mathematisch gesprochen an den
‘Limes’, so hebt sich von einem relativen Vollkommenheitsideal ein absolutes
ab. Es ist nichts anderes als das Ideal personaler absoluter Vollkommenheit:
absoluter theoretischer, axiotischer und in jedem Sinn praktischer Vernunft…
Der absolute Limes, der über alle Endlichkeit hinausliegende Pol, auf den alles
echt humane Streben gerichtet ist, ist die Gottesidee”18. Este ideal infinitamente
distante tiene su eco finito en la conciencia moral humana, desde el momento
que está puesta ante la tarea moral inagotable de lo óptimo, al tener que actuar
según el mejor saber y la mejor conciencia.
o.c
o.c., p. 33-34.