A Reflection on the Inner Connection between the Ethical and the Spiritual

Where not the eye a thing of sun,
How could we ever glimpse the light?
If in us God's own powers not run
Could we in the divine delight?  
(Goethe)

The question is how and why do we feel at home with God, with not taking a life, which God has made sacred, except in the pursuit of justice, with peace, with love, with truth and not lie, with loyalty and not adultery, with true testimony and not false, with passing by frivolity with dignity, not falling into rage and reaction in turn?  Why are these words endearing to us?  How do we know that these are divine ethical conducts?  Socrates asked Euthyphro, who was going to prosecute his own father for killing a slave, “why are you doing this?”  Euthyphro responded, “Because this is a pious action and loved by the gods?”  Socrates asked: “"Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"  The point is that “can you elaborate on God's commands?”  Can you see that there is something in these commands that is good for their own sake and not only because God commanded them?  And indeed, this inner essence is the reason that God commanded these moral conducts and called them pious and not others.

"If human vision remained confined to what is piped in as sensations through the eye to the retina, then, for instance, the Greeks would never been able to see Apollo in a statue of a young man or, to put this in a better way, they would never have been able to see the statue in and through Apollo.  There was a thought familiar to the old Greek thinkers, a thought that one all too crudely portrays thus: like is only known through like.  What is meant is that what speaks to us only becomes perceivable through our response.  Our hearing is in itself a responding." (Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, p.48)  

“The servants of the Lord of Mercy are those who walk humbly on the earth, and who, when the foolish address them, reply, ‘Peace’; those who spend the night bowed down or standing, worshipping their Lord, who plead, ‘Our Lord, turn away from us the suffering of Hell, for it is a dreadful torment to suffer!  It is an evil home, a foul resting place!’ They are those who are neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance; those who never invoke any other deity beside God, nor take a life, which God has made sacred, except in the pursuit of justice, nor commit adultery. (Whoever does these things will face the penalties: their torment will be doubled on the Day of Resurrection, and they will remain in torment, disgraced, except those who repent, believe, and do good deeds: God will change the evil deeds of such people into good ones. He is most forgiving, most merciful.  People who repent and do good deeds truly return to God.)

[The servants of the Lord of Mercy are] those who do not give false testimony, and who, when they see some frivolity, pass by with dignity; who, when reminded of their Lord’s signs, do not turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to them; those who pray, ‘Our Lord, give us joy in our spouses and offspring. Make us good examples to those who are aware of You’.  These servants will be rewarded with the highest place in Paradise for their steadfastness. There they will be met with greetings and peace.  There they will stay– a happy home and resting place! [Prophet, tell the disbelievers], ‘What are you to my Lord without your supplication? But since you have written off the truth as lies, the inevitable will happen.’” (25:63-77)

These characteristics ring familiar to our soul and we ‘know’ it is God speaking to us.  How do we know? 

1.      Walk humbly on the earth.

2.      When the foolish address them, reply, ‘Peace’.

3.      Spend the night bowed down or standing, worshipping your Lord.

4.      Be neither wasteful nor niggardly when you spend, but keep to a just balance;

5.      Never invoke any other deity beside God.

6.      Never take a life, which God has made sacred, except in the pursuit of justice.

7.      Never commit adultery.

8.     Whoever does these things will face the penalties, except those who repent, believe, and do good      deeds: God will change the evil deeds of such people into good ones. He is most forgiving, most  merciful.

9.     Do not give false testimony.

10.   When see some frivolity, pass by with dignity.

11.   When reminded of your Lord’s signs, do not turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to them.

12.   Pray, ‘Our Lord, give us joy in our spouses and offspring. Make us good examples to those who are aware of You’.

13.  Tell disbelievers: ‘What are you to my Lord without your supplication? But since you have written off the truth as lies, the inevitable will happen.’

So, again I ask: Why are these words endearing to us?  How do we know that these are divine ethical conducts?  Socrates asked Euthyphro, who was going to prosecute his own father for killing a slave, “why are you doing this?”  Euthyphro responded, “Because this is a pious action and loved by the gods?”  Socrates asked: “"Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"  The point is that “can you elaborate on God's commands?”  Can you see that there is something in these commands that is good for their own sake and not only because God commanded them?  And indeed, this inner essence is the reason that God commanded these moral conducts and called them pious and not others.  The question is how and why do we feel at home with God, with not taking a life, which God has made sacred, except in the pursuit of justice, with peace, with love, with truth and not lie, with loyalty and not adultery, with true testimony and not false, with passing by frivolity with dignity, not falling into rage and reaction in turn? 

The utilitarianist and pragmatist answer is that these are good ethical conducts or work better in our or some society, because they maximize happiness and pleasure for the most.  As the measure of conduct is externalized and turned into “maximizing happiness for the most” as a consequentialist philosophy, it follows that the ethical has no core within our disposition and principally any action (good or evil, pious or impious) that can maximize happiness and pleasure for the most is ethically justified—and this becomes a new definition of ‘good’.  This answer is incomplete and dangerous.  We know well that the hedonism of utilitarianism and pragmatism cannot ground our ethical actions and when the going gets tough, we will easily break them.  For an atheist, in any version, altruistic actions and devotion are accidental and contingent, because their measure doesn’t reside within our disposition but, the standard is external to our nature[1].  Or at best, evolutionary psychologists locate the core of altruistic actions in our genes and their survival.  So, they create a hiatus between us and our genes, making us the slaves of our genes, for whose survival any ethical conduct can go, because, again, the standard of ethical action is disconnected from the spiritual and is contingent on the survival of our genes.  And if this is the case, any action: murder, lie, adultery, or exploitation can be justified, if they preserve our genes.  Similarly, for utilitarianists and pragmatists, if any action can provide well-being and happiness, defined as pleasure (including aesthetics, pleasure: either mentally or physically), it is justified.  In this realm: murder, adultery, lying, or colonizing other people might be justified, if supposedly it brings greater happiness for the most.  Whose happiness?  What is the measure of happiness?  Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats, maximizing happiness for Indians and Britain, while Indian people and Gandhi’s happiness was independence.

This way of thinking dissociates the ethical from the spiritual, because they think it is a secular and objective method.  Consequentialism, as always, is a reaction to those gazes who see evil all around themselves, as in the time of inquisition and religious fanaticism and excess, people easily fell into righteous indignation and became judgmental about the intentions of others.  And this is the way we react: we are unable to discern the wheat from the chaff and easily throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Consequently, with the guillotine of an instrumental reason, we disconnected the ethical from God, and “why I should not lie, steal, or commit adultery” became contingent and relativistic.  Hence, we hollowed the meaning of our existence, because the way we conduct our actions had nothing to do with our soul, nor with our place in the universe and our relation to God.  It became nihilistic through and through. 

Socrates’ question was about the ‘essence’ of the ethical, not its external and contingent (accidental) effect or consequences.  So, in response to Euthyphro’s dilemma, one may say: If God had not already set the predisposition within us to feel and understand the difference between duplicity (lie) and oneness (truth), how could we understand and discern piety from impiety and God from Devil?  God is Oneness and Truth and we understand Oneness and Truth, because it is a divine measure and sign within us.  Our prayers and supplication to God have intrinsic value in holding our spiritual-ethical essence intact:

“We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)

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[1] Kantian Western Enlightenment of the sovereignty of reason has an interesting and strange ethical theory, which is a heroic attempt to show that our wired in and innate (a priori) law of reason defies inconsistency in ethical issues and falls into cognitive dissonance and contradiction if it can’t universalize its own moral actions, i.e., I shouldn’t find myself in cognitive dissonance if everyone does the same thing that I morally do. This Kantian theory can’t explain why this inconsistency should be avoided. Kant appeals to a sense of “reverence” for the law of reason within. We all understand the kind of shame and guilt we feel, when we realize we are inconsistence. Maturity of divine conscience is a movement from the shame we experience under the dictum of social norms only to the shame we experience if we violate our own divine nature and lose the integrity of our own conscience.