Bernard Lonergan’s Authentic Moral Subjectivity and Objectivity: A Solution to the Problem of the Culture of War and Peace in the Contemporary World.

Abstract

The question that underpins every act of war and its effects negates the value of life and humanity. Yet, it is true that war is not inevitable. In place of practical mercy, one can easily see the problem lies not in the action per se, but in the activity of human consciousness which motivate this kind of pervasive influences. Animals which are pure brutes are known not to go for war. This is because they don’t imagine, think, reason, and conceive it at all. Human beings choose violence and war as ways of getting things reach their own scale of measure. In this pursuit, they seem to forget the faculty of moral judgment which should and ought to guide every human action. Thus, the problem of peace and war coils on the idea of moral self-rational judgment implicit in every conscious human act. It is this faculty, so to speak, that exonerates brute animals and human being in a sense that it command that every human act within and without should be mediated by meaning and motivated by objective values which are sought by authentic living of genuine attention, genuine intelligence, genuine reasonableness and finally genuine responsibility.

It is our intention in this paper to explain the cause of war in place of peace in the contemporary world. It further draws a true dichotomy between war and opposition which has been variously misunderstood. The paper offers practical solution to the state of war against peace which has dominated the contemporary global society. It highlights and explicitates how morally converted people would solve issues, even in place of opposition politically, socially, economically, and ideologically, without falling into the culture of violence which is a key to the current culture of death, of no future and of no peace. Finally, the paper suggest ways of embracing peace and solidarity which, as it will be see, begs the question to moral conversion.

Key words: Ethics of Value, Consciousness of human acts, Moral conversion, Peace and

Ambience of harmony.