משבר ואמונה, אובדן האגו, א. קריסת ערכיםCrisis and Faith, I Ego Loss, 1 Collapse of Values
א׳
1We have asserted that this civilization is in a process of disintegration. In the past, there was a pretense that it was functioning in accordance with a system of values. There existed a dividing line between right and wrong, between good and evil. At least, there was an understanding of the distinction. Today, the dividing line has become blurred and uncertain. There is hardly a Thou-shalt or a Thou-shalt-not that is not being questioned. The value system of the West has collapsed.
ב׳
2There are two ways of looking at values, and interpreting their origin. Buber1Martin Buber, Eclipse of God, Harper & Row, New York, 1952. makes reference to the fact that Kant had no place for God in his Critique of Pure Reason. Theoretically, the existence of God was not to be proved. In his Critique of Practical Reason, he gave God status as a postulate of practical reason. Yet in his posthumous work one finds that he was struggling with the problem of the reality of God to the very end. According to Buber, Kant was searching for a source from which to derive the quality of absoluteness inherent in the ethical law. Kant understood that without God no ethical law could be absolutely binding. One might say that Sartre is the philosopher who represents the most extreme opposing view. According to him, man is initially nothing and has to create himself out of nothing; he is the creator of his own values. To this Buber responds by maintaining that man can only discover values; he cannot create them. Unfortunately, in this respect modern civilization sides with Sartre against Buber. In a sense, it is the logical consequence from what one might call the scientific world view.
ג׳
3For some time now, the modern scientific mind has denied the existence of all Absolutes. There is no absolute Truth, nor an Absolute God, and—of course—there are no absolute values. It has insisted that all our value concepts are relative. This means in essence that man is the creator of his own values. This position has been pursued to its ultimate consequence by the logical positivists who maintain that values are purely a matter of taste. One person likes cherry pie, another may enjoy incest or dislike it. It is all the same. Of course, if man is the creator of his own values, one might ask: which man? which people? which society? which system of government? It is enough to raise the question in order to realize how such relativism must lead to moral confusion, conflict, and chaotic anarchy. The psychopath—why indeed does one dub him thus?—who kills out of conviction is neither more or less right or wrong than the humanitarian—why indeed do you call him that?—who saves with compassion. What is right for one may be wrong for another; what is justice in one country may be inhuman in another. And no one may judge or condemn. All that one may be able to say is: “I like it!” or “I dislike it.” Man in the general, in the abstract, does not exist. He is always an individual, this man, that man, a certain kind of a human being, living at a certain time, in a specific situation, in this society or another. So that if man is the creator of values, it is every man creating his own values, everyone doing his own thing and being convinced that it is right, good, and beautiful. One might also say the test of values is success. Good is what succeeds; bad, that which fails.
ד׳
4At the close of the Second World War, speaking to the assembled leadership of the S.S. about the massacre of the Jewish people in Europe, Heinrich Himmler had the following to say:
ה׳
5“To have gone through that and to have remained an honest man just the same, save for the exceptions due to human nature, that is what has made you tough and strong. This is a glorious page in history, never before, never again to be written.” The statement is not really surprising; it is neither inhuman, nor absurd. It has its own truth, its own logic. Within the frame of reference of this civilization, it makes sense. In a world in which man creates his own values, where all principles of behavior are formulated by man alone and all morality is relative to the man and the society who conceive it, it does make good sense to commit genocide and yet to consider oneself an honest man, the author of a glorious page in human history. It is the ultimate manifestation of the collapse of the value system of modern civilization.
ו׳
6This collapse of values has had its most fateful consequences in the area of education by giving birth to the principle of permissiveness. “Do not frustrate the poor child, do not stunt the free development of his personality. Let him have his own way.” Such were the principles of a new education. The slogan was ‘to every child a childhood.’ All this was very well meant, but children also have certain rights, among which, for example, is the right to learn the difference between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between honesty and cheating, between excellence and mediocrity. If the child is not taught the difference, he assumes that there is no difference, that the educators themselves, parents and teachers, do not care about the difference. Finally, the child will come to realize that neither parents nor teachers care very much about the youth entrusted into their care. Permissiveness indeed means that they do not care; they do not care because the system of values has collapsed for them within their own personal life conduct.
ז׳
7In our days we have witnessed the rebellion of young people against “the establishment,” insisting that every one is entitled “to do his own thing.” It was a rather pathetic and pointless rebellion. For their elders, “the establishment,”—politicians, lobbyists, governments etc.—were all out doing their own thing. That is why the world today is balancing precariously at the brink of the abyss. What matters in human life is not so much what a person does, but the standards of values by which he acts. Permissiveness has been the betrayal that the elder generation perpetrated on its children. It has been modern civilization’s abdication of responsibility toward the future. Of course, one cannot help being permissive toward one’s children, if one is permissive in one’s life style and ethical and moral conduct. In a condition of the disintegration of all value standards betrayal of the future by permissiveness is unavoidable.
ח׳
8Of course, every school system reflects the image of the society that maintains it and in the midst of which it attempts to function. The school system in this civilization has ceased to provide educational institutions. The schools may offer instruction in the “Three R’s,” they may teach skills in the sciences, history, and languages. But the teaching of skills is not education. Education is concerned with the character, the personality, the soul of the young. A disintegrating civilization is incompetent to educate.
ט׳
9However, the root of the trouble goes much deeper. In modern civilization there has been a gradual loss of the sense of meaningfulness of existence, not just in the life of the individual, but in the universal All. A world anchored in the will of a Creator has a spiritual quality to it; it has intended meaningfulness. Buber, discussing the idea of revelation, says that one of the things that happens to a man who encounters God, the Divine Presence, in life, in history, is that he comes out of the experience with a sense of meaningfulness. He may not immediately be able to articulate the meaning in words, he may not succeed in grasping it clearly and distinctly, but he has gained the overwhelming conviction that from now on nothing can be meaningless. The essential quality of meaningfulness in reality has been absorbed by his entire being. He knows now that what he has to do is to go out into life and find it.2Martin Buber, I and Thou. Modern man has lost this sense of meaningfulness in existence.
י׳
10Science has transformed the universe into a chance event coming from nowhere, arising out of nothingness, propelled on by laws of nature that function because they function, having neither purpose nor inherent meaning. There is no plan, there is no goal. What is, is because it is. No wonder we have ended up talking of the absurdity of existence. The consequences of this loss of the sense of meaningfulness are twofold. What is the value of man himself in a universe in which the All itself is a chance event? He is but one infinitesimally small chance event among billions of other chance events. Man experiences a loss of his sense of his own value resulting in a declining respect for human life and human dignity. The tragic increase of crime, the inhuman forms of terrorism the world over, stem from this debunking of the dignity of man in modern civilization. Nietzsche said it well: Man loses faith in his own value if no infinitely valuable whole works through him. Once man understands himself to be a chance event in an indifferent universe, rather than the bearer of the divine image in the midst of creation, he loses his metaphysical dignity. Caught in the net of a completely materialized universe, represented by a mathematical formula, not only does he lose his own sense of value, he loses all sense of respect for what he encounters and any sensation of awe for the surrounding universe.
י״א
11The loss of meaningfulness is responsible for another pervasive feature of this civilization, namely boredom. When the value system has collapsed, one action is much like any other, and in a meaningless universe nothing can be taken too seriously. Without values there is no direction; without meaning there is no goal, there is no basis for genuine commitment to one distinctive course of action rather than to another. One is “into” this one day, “into” that another. No other generation of man had so much leisure time as ours; no other had so little knowledge of what to do with it as ours. With time hanging as heavy as lead on the soul of modern man he is trying desperately to free himself. Sensual indulgence, or addiction to drugs, are natural outcomes as avenues of escape from boredom, emptiness, meaninglessness. Young people seem to be more sensitive to the dissolution than their elders. More than any other segment of the population they are asking the questions about the aim, the meaning, the value of it all, and they receive no answers.
י״ב
12That which is responsible for the collapse of values and the loss of meaning has also brought upon man the misery of his alienation. Modern man is alienated from God and Nature, from his fellowmen, from himself, from reality itself. He lives in loneliness in the midst of multitudes, like a stranger in the world that is no longer home to him. He is personified by Kafka’s non-hero, who, with his attempt to get into touch with the Castle doomed to failure, lives on in a state of disconnectedness.
י״ג
13There are varied roots for man’s manifold alienation. We shall deal with those that—as discussed earlier—are also the causes of the dissolution of values and meaning.
י״ד
14The scientific method generalizes and objectifies, so that science cannot deal with the individual and personal. Quantification by mathematical formulae closes out the qualitative aspects of reality and existence. Now, this is necessary for the purpose of scientific research and elucidation of the physical nature of the world. Scientific coolness and objectivity has an impressive dignity of its own within the confines of quantification. But when science becomes scientism and claims to be the only source of truth, nature is turned into the cold and heartless dominion of the impersonal that is completely indifferent towards man. Every kind of personal experience, whether aesthetic, religious, spiritual, or mystical, is then derided as the purely subjective Schwärmerei of romanticists, to which nothing corresponds in the truth of objective reality. No bridge is possible from the completely objectified impersonal realm of nature to the subjective personal realm in which alone man may exist.
ט״ו
15What is man within the purview of scientism? Like everything else, he too must be objectified. The personal essence of his being is disregarded. He is turned into a specimen, a sample of a species. He is treated like another object among objects. To what does he amount in an objectified impersonal cosmos? Arthur Eddington, the distinguished astro-physicist, with a rich measure of delightfully English humor, has put it this way:
ט״ז
16“Nature seems to have been intent on a vast evolution of fiery worlds. As for Man—it seems unfair to be always raking up against Nature her one little inadvertense. By a trifling hitch of machinery—not of any serious consequence in the development of the universe—some lumps of matter of the wrong size have occasionally been formed. These lack the purifying protection of intense heat or the equally efficacious absolute cold of space. Man is one of the gruesome results of this occasional failure of antiseptic precautions …”3New Pathways in Science, Cambridge University Press, 1935, p. 309.
י״ז
17From the exclusively scientific point of view man is the outcome of a slight malfunction in cosmic engineering, an unimportant cosmic oversight. What Eddington is saying is that the inescapable result of the scientific objectification of all reality, including man’s existence as well, is ultimate estrangement and cosmic homelessness. Man loses his status in the cosmos. He does not really belong there. He is a rootless stranger in the universal structure, torn from what is most precious to him, his individuality, which is robbed of the last shred of its dignity and is turned into a ghostly shadow of objectified reality. Man thus becomes a cosmic refugee. Cosmic insecurity invades his whole being. He is all alone, surrounded by the freezing indifference of the universe. He neither knows his place, nor does he know—much less understand—himself. This is man’s metaphysical identity crisis.
י״ח
18Therein lies also the ultimate reason for the collapse of values and the loss of meaning. Meaning, purpose and value are the hallmarks of personal existence; they are the essential qualities of the personal life. The quantified world of generalized abstraction has destroyed the ontological validity of personal reality, leading to the dissolution of values and the disintegration of meaning. It has brought upon man the most tragic aspect of his alienation, estrangement from his very humanity. Contemporary man has lost all sense of direction. He is wandering aimlessly in the roadless wasteland of his unsure humanity.
י״ט
19In his book on alienation,4The Age of Alienation, Random House, New York, 1971, pp. 185-86. Bernard Murchland discusses Dewey’s approach to the subject. According to Dewey, “the problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man’s belief about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life.” The task was to establish harmony and partnership between the “so-called subjective values” of aesthetics, religion and ethics, and the “presumed objective” truths of science. The consciousness of science is to be integrated fully with the consciousness of human values. When this is achieved, says Dewey, “the greatest dualism which now weighs humanity down, the split between the material, the mechanical, the scientific and the moral and the ideal will be destroyed.” The problem was thus well defined. But how was it to be solved? Dewey’s humanist naturalism may be a good slogan, but it is no solution to the problem. Values belong exclusively in the personal dimension. Science has no norm for that dimension.
כ׳
20Dewey’s position, however, is no longer relevant. In his days it was still meaningful to say that the most serious problem of the times was to coordinate man’s scientific beliefs about the world with his beliefs about values, because people still held rather strong beliefs about values and meaning. The man of today, on the other hand, has reached a condition of complete value disorientation. His present condition resembles that of Meursault, the non-hero in Camus’ novel, The Stranger. In the eyes of Meursault all is futility. One course of action is not much different from any other. Out of a semblance of duty he attends the funeral of his mother but the event itself means nothing to him. On the way home from the funeral he picks up a girl, not because he desires her much, but simply because “what’s the difference!” He murders a man for much the same reason. Nothing really matters. But Meursault is sent to prison, and he finds salvation in death row, where finally he is able to lay his heart open to “the benign indifference of the universe.” He is at peace now with his fate, for he has discovered unity with cosmic indifference. He is no longer a “Stranger;” he has found home in a world that has ceased to be home for man. He has overcome his estrangement by becoming one with universal indifference. “To feel it so like myself, indeed so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.” The “Stranger” is at home in homelessness; he finds happiness by being reconciled to absurdity. He overcomes his alienation by realizing that in our “indifferent universe” there is nothing to which it is worth relating in a personal manner, not even to one’s own fate. Meursault is saved by the revelation of his brotherhood with cosmic meaninglessness.
כ״א
21With perspicacity and intellectual courage, Camus drew the final conclusion from man’s modern predicament. Having surrendered his soul to secularism and scientism, man finds himself stranded on an alien shore. He solves the problem of his alienation by recognizing it as itself meaningless. It is meaningless to ask for meaning in a cosmic ocean of meaninglessness. There is no problem of alienation where alienation is the authentic form of being. One is not a stranger where nothing human is at home, where brotherhood is oneness with an impersonal brotherless universe. This is indeed the ultimate logic inherent in the contemporary intellectual situation. The problem is not that of Dewey, how to reconcile scientific truth with spiritual and ethical values. The problem is how to regenerate man’s atrophied value sense, how to resurrect the collapsed standards of ethics and morality, how to regain the spiritual quality of human existence. What is required is the healing of man’s alienation by restoring him to the dignity of personal status in the context of a universe of meaningfulness.