O radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
Love flows from an unconditional affirmation of another in her reality. Put another way: to the extent that I hold my affirmation of her reality hostage to exact some kind of change from her, to the same extent am I bereft of love. Love is the beginning and the end—the alpha and the omega of existence. Just as a blossom springs from soil that is fertile, so ethics has its original ground in love. And just as a plant strives towards its blossom and its fruit, so ethics strives to become what it was in the beginning.
That a moral regard for another person is mediated by a more or less unconditional affirmation of his reality is not necessarily an affirmation of what the other thinks, feels, or will, but that he thinks, feels, or wills it. This affirmation has neither to do with condoning falsehoods nor exulting righteousness. Instead, it is prior to both of these things. The moral stance is a recognition of the transcendental element of freedom in the other. Just as will means “force that is becoming conscious,” so freedom means “will that is becoming conscious.” This is the same will that, since the beginning, has created and sustained all being in the universe including what we recognize as the moral order, and which we continue to carry-forward through participation in it.
One branch of a tree has differentiated itself from its neighbor but to begin with, they were one bough; enfolded together in an anterior unity. In the same way, the will which confronts me in opposition from my brother is the same will that I know as my very own, but in an alienated majesty. The will which established the mountain where it stands is the same which courses through my limbs. In both cases, I experience the freedom in one and must seek to discover it in the other. The first is the beginning of self-knowledge1 and the second is the consummation of self-knowledge in Love.2
As Jesus said:
Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. (Matthew 5:17)
Γνῶθι σαυτόν, gnōthi sauton, or “know thyself,” as the Delphic injunction to philosophy stated.
Dilige et quod vis fac, or “love and do what you will,” as Saint Augustine wrote (Homilies on the First Epistle of John).
Max, I just came across this presentation of "Bioethics in a Pandemic - Learning from the Past
https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2146/2020-09-01-bioethics-pandemic-learning-past
It's published by a law firm. A very powerful law firm as it is. A firm that employs lawfare, jurisprudence blackmail to push a clearly Marxist cultural agenda through expensive litigation. Working with governments and social justice warrior organizations to penalize all who stand in the way of their agenda of transforming western liberal democracies into collectivist totalitarianism.
It asserts "the ethical distribution of resources amid any pandemic is supported by the balance and tension among the four ethics principles: autonomy, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence." Throughout the screed it bolds the world "justice" as the overriding ethical consideration that weighs collectivist authoritarian public policy above all the others. JUSTICE demands individuals make sacrifices for the greater good!!" Ethics. As they present their view of ethics.
What are your thoughts on their presentation of ethics that mandates public policy and business decisions outweigh individual sovereignty? It applies the same "ethics" to all of the social justice upheavals of our time. Subjugate the individual for the collective. Ethics. The law demands it.
I find it fascinating to understand the thought processes and logic of these foes to freedom and civil liberties, how they rationalize authoritarianism, and get the legal system to buy into it, ignoring the plain language of the US Constitution and Canadian Charter, the UN's human rights charter for that matter. Ethical "justice" claims. Thoughts?
Beautiful. Stirring. True.