Perfection - Ethics

Ethics

The ethical question of perfection concerns not whether man is perfect, but whether he should be. And if he should be, then how is this to be attained?

Plato seldom actually used the term, "perfection"; but the concept of "good", central to his philosophy, was tantamount to "perfection." He believed that approximation to the idea of perfection makes people perfect.

Soon after, the Stoics introduced the concept of perfection into ethics expressly, describing it as harmony — with nature, reason, man himself. They held that such harmony—such perfection—was attainable for anyone.

Plato and the Stoics had made perfection a philosophical watchword. Soon it would be transformed, in Christianity, into a religious one.

The Christian doctrine of perfection is in the Gospels as well as elsewhere in the Bible. Matthew 5:48 enjoins: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Early Christian writings, especially Paul's, are replete with calls to perfection. Many of these are collected in a discourse by St. Augustine, De perfectione iustitiae hominis. They begin already with the Old Testament: "Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God." (Deuteronomy 18:13.) Elsewhere synonyms for "perfection" are "undefiled", "without rebuke", "without blemish", "blameless", "holy", "righteous", "unblamable", "unreprovable."

Augustine explains that not only that man is properly termed perfect and without blemish who is already perfect, but also he who strives unreservedly after perfection. This is a broader concept, of approximate perfection, resembling that used in the exact sciences. The first ancient and Christian perfection was not very remote from modern self-perfection. St. Ambrose in fact wrote about degrees of perfection ("gradus piae perfectionis").

Along with the idea of perfection, Holy Scripture conveyed doubt as to whether perfection was attainable for man. According to 1 John 1:8, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Similarly Jesus said in Matthew 19:17: "And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God..."; while Jesus does not deny that he himself is good, he does call into question the idea that anyone but God can even be good, let alone perfect. And St. Jerome wrote: "Perfectio vera in coelestibus" — true perfection is to be found only in heaven.

As early as the 5th century C.E., two distinct views on perfection had arisen within the Church: that it was attainable by man on earth by his own powers; and, that it may come to pass only by special divine grace. The first view, which was championed by Pelagius, was condemned in 417 C.E.; the second view, which was championed by St. Augustine, prevailed at the very beginning of the 5th century and became authoritative.

Still, the Church did not condemn the writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite, purportedly the first bishop of Athens, voicing a natural possibility for man to rise to perfection, to the contemplation of God. And so, for centuries, two views contended within the Church.

Even as, for the ancient philosophers, the essence of perfection had been harmony, so for the Gospel and the Christian theologians it was charity, or love. St. Paul wrote (Epistle to the Colossians, 3:14): "And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

St. Gregory wrote that perfection will be realized only after the fulfillment of history — only "then will the world be beautiful and perfect." Still, everyone should make his own approach to perfection — to holiness. Discourses in moral theology and asceticism were generous with advice on how this was to be done.

The medieval concept of perfection and self-perfection, especially in its mature form, can be natural for modern man. As formulated by Peter Lombard, this concept implies that perfection is a result of development. And as described by Giles of Rome, perfection has not only personal sources ("personalia") but social ones ("secundum statum"). Since the individual is formed within a society, the second perfection subsumes the first, in accordance with the "order of the universe" ("ordo universi"). The social perfection is binding on man, whereas personal perfection is only becoming to him.

Theses on perfection persist within the Church to the present day. The first condition for perfection is the desire of it. Also necessary is grace — but God gives grace to those who desire perfection and strive for it. Another condition for perfection is constancy of striving and effort. Augustine says: "He who stops, regresses." And effort is necessary in things not only great but also in the smallest; the Gospel according to St. Luke says: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." An aid in approaching perfection is an awareness of God's perfection and of one's own imperfection.

The 14th century saw, with the Scotists, a shift in interest from moral to ontological perfection; the 15th century, particularly during the Italian Renaissance, a shift to artistic perfection.

The first half of the 16th century saw John Calvin's complete conditioning of man's perfection on the grace of God.

The second half of the 16th century brought the Counter-reformation, the Council of Trent, and a return of the Catholic concept; and also, heroic attempts to attain perfection through contemplation and mortification. This was the age of Ignatius Loyola and the founding of the Jesuit Order; of St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) and St. John of the Cross (1542–91), and the 1593 founding of the Barefoot Carmelites. This was the culminating point in the history of the Christian idea of perfection; at the same time, it was the terminal point as there soon began attempts at reforming the idea.

The first half of the 17th century saw attempts at a Catholic reform of the idea of perfection. This was the time of Cornelis Jansen (1585–1638) and of Jansenism — of a growing belief in predestination and in the impossibility of perfection without grace.

With the second half of the 17th century came a further development in the doctrine of predestination — the doctrine of "Quietism." Perfection could be reached through a passive awaiting of grace rather than by an active striving. This theory, formulated in Spain by Miguel de Molinos (ca. 1628 - 1697), spread in France, where it was espoused by Madame Guyon (1648–1717) and for a time attracted François Fénelon.

The 18th century brought a sea change to the idea of moral perfection. Faith in it remained, but it changed character from religious to secular. This secular, 18th-century perfection was a fundamental article of faith for the Enlightenment. Its central tenet was that nature was perfect; and perfect, too, was the man who lived in harmony with nature's law.

Primitive man was held to be the most perfect, for he was closest to nature. Perfection lay behind present-day man rather than before him, for civilization distanced man from perfection instead of bringing him closer to it.

A second interpretation, however, took the contrary view: civilization perfected man by bringing him closer to reason, and thereby to nature; for reason would direct life with due consideration for the laws of nature.

The former, retrospective view of perfection had antecedents in antiquity: Hesiod and Ovid had described a "golden age" that had existed at the beginning of time, and which had been succeeded by silver, copper and Iron Ages, each inferior to the previous. The renewal of this view now, after two millennia, was stimulated by European contact with the "primitive" peoples of the Americas. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was but one of many who wrote in a similar vein.

These two mid-18th-century schools of thought — one seeing perfection in nature and in the past, and the other in civilization and in the future — represented a reaction not against the idea of perfection, but against its transcendental interpretation: as, earlier, the measure of perfection had been the idea of God, so now it was the idea of nature or of civilization. It was the latter idea that ultimately gained the upper hand and passed into the 19th century as the legacy of the Enlightenment.

The idea of perfection as transcendental, fell away; only worldly perfection counted. The idea that perfection was a matter of grace, also fell by the wayside; man himself must strive for it, and if a single man could not accomplish it, then perhaps mankind could. As God had been the measure of perfection during the Middle Ages, so now man was: the measure had become smaller, more accessible. To the thinking of the 19th century, such worldly, human perfection might ultimately be attainable by everyone. And if not perfection, then improvement. This would be the great concept of the modern age.

At the very midpoint of the 18th century, there occurred an exceptional momentary retreat from the idea of perfection. It was in the French Encyclopédie. The entry, "Perfection" (vol. XII, 1765), discussed only technical perfection, in the sense of the matching of human products to the tasks set for them; no mention was made of ontological, moral or esthetic perfection.

Otherwise, the 18th century saw great declarations championing the future perfection of man, as in Immanuel Kant's Idee zu einer allgemeinem Geschichte (1784) and Johann Gottfried von Herder's Ideen (1784/91).

Perfection was expected to come about by a variety of means. Partly it would be by way of natural development and progress (the view espoused by David Hume) but more so by way of education (precursors of this view included John Locke, David Hartley, and the leaders of the Polish Enlightenment) and by way of overt state action (Claude Adrien Helvétius, later Jeremy Bentham); reliance was placed in cooperation among people (Charles Fourier, 1808), later in eugenics (Francis Galton, 1869). While the foundations of the faith in the future perfectibility of man changed, the faith itself persisted. It linked the people of the Enlightenment with the idealists and romantics — with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Polish Messianists — as well as with the 19th-century Positivists and evolutionists; Herbert Spencer penned a great new declaration championing the future perfection of man.

The idea of human perfectibility had, however, become more comprehensive. Man would attain greater perfection, in the sense that he would live more rationally, healthily, happily, comfortably. But there was no adequate term for this new conception, as the term "perfection" had a moral coloring, while the new goal was more intellectual, physical and social.

In 1852, John Henry Newman, the future British cardinal, wrote that it would be well if the English language, like the Greek, had a term to express intellectual perfection, analogously to the term "health", which addresses man's physical state, and to "virtue", which speaks to his moral nature. During the 19th century, the Germans would come to call perfection, thus construed, "culture" (Kultur), and the French would call it "civilization" (civilisation).

One of the elements of perfection, in its new construction, is health, understood by the World Health Organization as "a state of complete physical and mental well-being."

Still, the burgeoning achievements of contemporary biology have not dislodged the age-old interest in moral perfection — with the important distinction, that the goal now is not so much perfection as improvement. A classic early-19th century exponent of this view was Fichte.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the advances of science and technology appear to have been paralleled to some extent by increasingly pluralistic attitudes. The Polish philosopher Władysław Tatarkiewicz (1886–1980) has written: "To demand of someone that he strive after perfection seems equally inappropriate as to blame him for not striving after it." Such striving, he adds, "is often egocentric and yields poorer moral and social results than an outward-directed behavior based not on self-perfection but on good will and kindliness toward others."

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