In his article "From Utilitarianism to Ethics" (in Before Ethics), Adriaan Peperzak outlines a history of modern ethics from utilitarianism to our present post-modern thinking, represented by Heidegger. He views utilitarian ways of thinking as perfectly at home in a consumer-oriented world. "Money is the best expression and symbol for the postulated homogeneity of those goods, "values," pleasures, and properties, the sum of which is supposed to encapsulate the human striving for well-being." p.104. "[B]ut it uncritically accepts the banal convictions of those who see human existence as the universalization of consumption and good business." p. 105. "A thorough justification of human rights seems impossible within the utilitarian frameword." p. 106. "Facts cannot generate norms unless they themselves have a normative character." p.105.
Peperzak finds Kant's and Hegel's efforts to ground ethics unsuccessful, and points out that Heidegger's views seem to describe our condition of cultural nihilism or "rootlessness." This is the same term Cardinal Ratzinger used in his book Without Roots, which describes the malaise of modern western culture. In Peperzak's description, according to Heidegger "we are no longer at home in the world; we do not know what a homeland is. The sacred spaces have been ruined; the gods have been chased away by the ruthless domination of technology. We are estranged by Being, homelessly wandering in a desert. . ." p.113. "According to Heidegger it is the task of poets and thinkers to wake and wait for Being's gift by heeding language as its abode." p. 114. "Poets and thinkers are claimed and 'used' by Being as guardians and messengers of its approach." Ibid.
A rather depressing diagnosis, but in my more honest moments I can relate to the experience of homelessness in a world seemingly gone mad in ever more extreme attempts to find meaning.
Peperzak, however, views this "desert of our cultural nihilism" as not only an emergency but an opportunity. He views this "dark night" and desert in terms described by such Christian thinkers as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, John of the Cross, and Emmanuel Levinas, to wit, as presenting the possibility of purification, of finding out who we are. Rather than finding that home in language, a la Heidegger, he sees our rootless as being corrected in a relationship with an Other, a relationship that is ethical and grounded in silence rather than language. I would like to quote one paragraph:
"The language from which morally qualified relations and behavior start is not necessarily a rich, perceptive, poetic, or thoughtful one. A simple "hello!" for example, is enough to initiate a morally qualified event. Such an utterance has no content, or almost none. Essential to it is its being addressed by someone to someone, not its truth, or the meaning of the proposition, or the content of the performance it may or may not convey. In addressing myself to someone in speech or writing, or by a gesture of greeting, I answer a demand; I have already accepted my responsibility toward this other who, by the claim of simply being there, orients my space, brain, heart, and my entire body. If 'language' is synonymous with a meaningful literary heritage or with a semiotic system, its silence does not hinder but rather stresses the eloquence of the address from which an ethical relationship emerges. The anonymity of an aesthetic cosmos and an inherited language in which singular individuals only play the role of actors may form the context within which we meet, but it will never explain what it means to face, to address, to speak to, or to correspond with some other." p. 116.
Peperzak goes on to say, "No longer do we firmly belong to any one of the peoples, cultures, or beliefs that form the museum of our past." "[T]here is only one possibility of becoming humanly oriented: to greet or be greeted by another individual. This seems to be the saving nearness or proximity in a situation of cultural nihilism. The neighborhood of the one to the other transcends our problems of cultivation, housing, building, poetry, and thought. It precedes and survives them because its goodness does not belong to the wealthy subsistence or ousia of settled nations; it wipes them away, if it comes to the emergency of a face-to-face between homeless wanderers in the desert. " p. 117. "Morality is the presence of the eternal in history. . ." p. 115.
Notice the importance of silence in what Peperzak describes. The other's "call" to us essentially is a silent one, because it is a recognition of the transcendence, the "infinite" of the other, and that occurs in silence. A meeting eye to eye, a greeting, a raised hand, a "Hi!", can "connect" each other's transcendent being. Language is secondary.
To be greeted, to be recognized . . . in my own life, that has been the highest and most touching experience! Referring again to Mandestam's poem Silentia, love is found in the reverent silence of recognizing one another. There, according to Peperzak and the others he references, we find "home" in the rootless, wandering, desert of our lives. Our faith tells us that God recognizes each of us, giving us a "home." When we recognize one another we join in God's work of hospitality.
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