Exploring the Disappearance of Time in Ethics: Professor O'Donovan's Gifford Lecture

good afternoon welcome everybody both in saint andrews and around the world we are very pleased to have you with us

for the second of professor o'donovan's six gifford lectures here at st anders this year

we began on tuesday with the first of the first set of lectures the lecture series as a whole is divided into two

parts each consisting of three lectures the first three a critique of the ways in which ethics has been in

danger of disappearing from the university and from public discourse as a distinctive contribution to the way in

which we know and move around the world and professor o'donovan has begun to argue that the

disappearance of ethics is related to the disappearance of its distinctive horizons or goods or intentions

so in the first lecture he talked to us about the disappearance of the good and in this lecture he will move on to the

disappearance of time before discussing the disappearance of the person in the next lecture and then moving to the

second set of three in which he will give constructive theological contributions to the re-assembly or the

building up of ethics again we'll hear from professor o'donovan in just a minute before we do some

housekeeping points the first is that there will be a time for q a after the lecture the q a will

be handled by submission of questions you will see in the bar uh a question mark in a

speech bubble that will allow you to post your questions and we will then moderate and pose them to the speaker

there will not be time to answer all questions and both the publication and the response to

questions are at the discretion of the host and of the speaker so we may not take them in the order of submission and

as i say we will almost certainly not be able to get to all of them however professor o'donovan will be

able to see the transcript of the entire questionnaire of the entire q a after the lecture and

he will be very pleased to have feedback from you so please do raise your questions even if we don't get to them

the other thing to say about questions is that they are posted anonymously by default but we would be very pleased if

you identified yourself especially if professor donovan is familiar uh with you so please do put your name if you

would uh like it to be known and pose your questions as soon as the q a is live which will be at the end of the

lecture the other housekeeping point is that as our coordinator robin murray put it so

nicely this is the time of year when countries express their individual personality by setting different times

for the change of clocks british clocks are going back on the 31st of october but the us and the rest

of north america is not going back until a week later and there may be other changes in other

areas so please do make sure that you have the right time when we continue next week

without further ado professor donovan we're so pleased to have you with us it was a very enriching lecture on tuesday

and we look forward very much to this continuation over to you a meeting heavy with symbolism

occurred on october 1827 in weimar

the eminent hegel dropped in for tea with the elderly and yet more eminent gerta

and their conversation turned to dialectic the philosopher explained that this word

meant the regulated methodically cultivated spirit of contradiction which is innate in all men and which

shows itself great as a talent in the distinction between the true and the false

this produced an explosion from the old man let us only hope that these intellectual

arts and dexterities are not frequently misused to make the false true and truthful

hagel parents that such a use of dialectic would be mentally diseased

only eliciting the acid retort i therefore congratulate myself on the study of nature

which preserves me from such a disease there we have to deal with the infinitely and eternally true

now what offended goethe was not the commonplace idea that knowledge is reached by a zigzag course

it was the idea that knowledge was in the end no more than the contradictions involved

in reaching it knowledge he thought must be decisively achievable

one who knows something about nature is at the far end of an inquiry

beyond the ebb and flow of arguments occupying the observer's viewpoint dialectic on the other hand

admits no observers only participants and it defers an absolute truth

until the end of history by dialectic in effect hagel referred to history

as productive of truth that meeting of the 18th century philosophy of nature

where the 19th century philosophy of history was pregnant with

a very great deal of 20th century reflection from

one might say lenin to einstein now in our first lecture we attempted to recover the link asserted in ancient

philosophy between good and being something is good by virtue of what it is

not by virtue of what it is not and this brought us face to face with two related challenges

one was to conceive the harmony of two different ways in which we know good by enjoyment

and by action the other was to bring interview the temporal dimension

that governs enacted good so today we approach the frontier of time

another of the elements of moral thought that tend to disappear now it can seem that good and time are

detachable the goodness of god is self-sufficient and eternal though has no need of my

good the psalmist declared mine as belonging to this moment this agent

the good is complete and to worship and enjoy it is to be lifted up beyond the changing

times of life and action yet pure enjoyment without action

is not something we can easily conceive of knowledge of the good

commands our existence but existence is oriented to engagement in the world

worship of the good may indeed have a timeless quality of contemplation but it may also be a first action

a point at which the good that has no need of our good elicits

a particular good response from us and that is the logic that leads from the real good

to the temporal good something is good for us not only by virtue of what it is

but by virtue of when we meet it by its coming first or next

or later we speak of the right moment for an action

or even for an experience the same thing done or experienced

earlier or later would not be as good this first

or next or later cannot be separated from our experience of the real good

reality includes time as well as being now of course time may

be seen simply as a lens through which unchanging regularities of nature are

observed watch a rose bush for a year and you will learn about its annual

cycle of leafing body

and dying back watch many rose bushes for many years and you will learn of their other

natural features their lifespan varieties of habit conditions for success

and so on and all this will be essentially the same

whenever and wherever it is learned what i observe in my roses is more or less what my grandfather

observed in his time displays regularities natural regularities

including recurrent natural finalities or ends as a form of life

the rose is always developing in a certain direction towards a certain end in search of

nutrition in search of growth reproduction following a natural course from

immaturity to maturity but then of course it is also leading on to senescence and

death times display of nature's regularity brings us back at the end

to where we began gertard wrote last in unfamiliar

nights suzanne let the beginning and the end draw together as one

we may recall a line from gs eliot which says something very similar one way of putting this is to say that a

rose has a life but it does not have a history time reveals the rose

the rose does not reveal time theologians sometimes refer to what they call a circular idea of

time but in fact it's not time that is circular

it is nature time simply displays nature's circularity

we would do better to speak i think of a refractive idea of time time is a prism

through which the spectrum of nature is laid out in due sequence

now nothing in all of this could have caused goethe any uneasiness as a novelist and a dramatist

he was well used to displaying nature through time but suppose we turn

from the rose bush to another plant

we're advised by jesus of nazareth to learn the parable of the fig tree from that he suggests we may learn about

times that are coming for when the fig leaves we shall know

in the eastern mediterranean at any rate that high summer is at hand here the demonstrative relation of

nature and time has been reversed a natural form of being the fig responding naturally to its

context has become the lens through which we can mark the progress of time on a much

wider front towards a much wider finality and that finality we refer to not as

maturity but as fulfillment those two ideas are very different

maturity is observable fulfillment is not a fulfillment is the end of an end a

higher structure of finality superimposed on a lower one for ends form

pyramids human beings have organic finalities of health and strength which mature

usually somewhere between our 20th and 30th year but there are other regular finalities

that are equally human beyond that threshold are effective activity for example

depending as it does on acquired experience and not merely on physical strength

is at its height perhaps around 50. but then beyond that again there is a finality in existence itself

and the attainment of that cannot be predicted and measured like the two lower finalities

fulfillment is never recurrent it's always measured it's always aspired to

we know that we may succeed or fail in it but we're never sure whether we have

succeeded or failed call no man happy said solomon of athens until he's dead

yet even then we must reflect it's only a crude conjecture for we do not know that person's

aspirations from the inside so if we go then and look beyond the individual life and ask about the life

of a human culture or even the life of world history as a whole

it's clear that fulfillment is something we can only view from a position of relative unfulfillment

it's a frontier we may approach but not a territory we can have possessed

the idea of fulfillment is formed by our immersion in time our inability to narrate more than a fragment

of our past while we look forward to a future that is

at once a closed book and the focus of all our practical striving

jesus parable claims that like the fig leaf that signals the approach of summer

so certain indicative events may signal the fulfillment of history

but that fulfillment is something we have to learn how to see and how to talk about

it's not like talking about regularities of nature in the historicist thinkers of the 19th

century the term evolution was a term used not only for observable or conjectured

recurrent processes of modification in specific organisms but also for an overarching narrative of

bio history that would account for everything narrative is a sequential accounting of

events with a logic of its own it's quite distinct from classification and description

history is known through narrative and yet the thought of a narrative of

all history is very mysterious because our immersion in time forbids us

narrative access to the future of fulfillment a comprehensive world historical

narrative from the beginning to the end such as was attempted and outlined by

augustine with some self-awareness of what he was doing and not infrequently by medieval

imitators with rather less self-awareness is not what historians think of when

they speak of their craft what they do is recount segregated and partitioned episodes

they tell only one of many possible histories they can inquire objectively into the

history of commercial expansion in 18th century britain or they can inquire into the development

of political structures in ancient greece but they cannot acquire

enquire objectively into history as a whole for what history as a whole contains

is what is still to become of us history in the singular as they use the term

refers simply to the art or method of objective inquiry that establishes a narrative of some particular history

so when philosophy conceives the idea of a single all-embracing world history

a totality that is implied by all the partial histories joined up we have to wonder how such a history

could ever be told and by whom it could be told to us

who are situated somewhere within it to that question faith believes

that it may have an answer it would seem that a revelation that accompanied the unfolding of history

itself could give us an indication of its direction as a whole

learn the lesson of the fig tree it tells us all that about history

what of history and ethics now we plainly cannot entertain the idea that the good is simply an elaboration

of the progress of time a thought summed up satirically by c.s lewis

in the phrase goodness equals what comes next the good cannot be reduced to

indeterminate possibilities any more than it can be reduced to determine at facts

yet it still seems impossible to disentangle moral thought from future time

a practical disposition consists of intentions directed to the future reflective thoughts may move both

backwards and forwards at will through time but existence always moves in one direction out of the past into the

future and action has to follow that same direction

in proposing to act we reflect on how things have been in order to deliberate on how things

shall be action is not as is sometimes foolishly suggested

only a matter of the here and now the active present is inseparable from memories and

anticipations to try to live in a presence without a past or a future

would be an extreme form of dementia now about this temporal direction of moral thought

let us make three observations the first is this that deliberation

which is the name we give thinking about what to do is a stance in relation to time

that is quite different from all other stances it's different on the one hand from

recollection of the past it's different on the other from feeling in the present

its object is future the action that is presently a thought in the mind

must shortly become an event in the world and all our imagination is bent on how

the world will be when that happens yet this is not anticipation in the common sense which has to do with

predicting events when we deliberate on a course of action we do of course predict

but we also assert a claim to decide secondly it is an existential necessity that we

deliberate not only on our needs but on our life as a whole

we care not only for what we are about to do but for what we are going to become

we teach children this in the simplest way don't we by asking them

what you want to be when you grow up but what we have to become

is necessarily much wider than what we are to do it involves anticipations of longer term

future conditions over which we have no power to decide to devote oneself to the practice of

some art let's say music one must envisage your future if only conjecturally

in which certain conditions that are important to that practice are realized

we must envisage being better at that art than we are today

we must envisage making sacrifices for the art in other areas of life

we must envisage being constantly at risk of the loss of skills or competencies by

accidents and so on action life and history the three form a

linkage in our understanding uh

of the fulfillment of our agency andrew arrington writing from sydney in a question which we didn't get around to

on tuesday asked about that linkage and how it points to god and that brings us to our third

observation our agency points us to god ultimately not immediately

because we find that we cannot thoughtfully exercise it without some confidence

in an ultimate future so at least thought cut rather in tension

with his primary account of moral thought as conformity to the form of law which we glanced at briefly last time

since law offers a critique of instinctive appetites he argued the conscientious application of law

requires a higher object of appetite the expectation of a reconciled moral state

a state of blessedness to pursue any good under the discipline of reason

as we ought to pursue it we need to pursue it in the context of a last good

and ultimate vindication of reason itself and here

we need a power greater than anticipation we need a moral faith

a belief that ultimately the course of events will prove hospitable

to the efforts of moral life and action well what we draw from all this is that the use of moral reason

involves not only aspirations for the future but a number of different kinds of

cognitive relation to it yet a cooperative relation to the future is not at all like a cognitive relation

to the past the past is determinant it's known it's recollected it's narrated

it has happened the future so not out of reach

of or anticipation of hope of faith is essentially unknown never can we think of the future as we

do of the past not that is without forgetting our historicity and pretending to occupy some imaginary

lookout posts with views in both directions freedom encounters the future

as open and receptive ready to be determined by action

yet freedom also requires that we should be able to act fittingly in relation to the future

we're not doomed always to shoot our arrows into the dark we may anticipate enough

to aim responsibly in anticipating things we can use

imprudence a word which means of course foresight and prudence

is the capacity to interpret past experience and select from it that which promises some measure of

persistent regularity in the future allowing us a kind of partial probing of the future

even prudent anticipation is no more than an approximation to knowledge of course the hard knowledge on which it

depends is actually knowledge of the past an experience of processes

repeated with such regularity that we feel we may safely project them into the future always

pathetically but with some confidence or people say some processes are so broadly immune

from interruption that we can agree without stretching language too far

that we know something is going to happen

it would be too scrupulous to worry about a claim to know the our

sunset tomorrow night or the time of high tide tomorrow morning

but most predictions allows much less security than that and some people are clearly better at

making than others they're judicious in selecting the relevant predictive factors

in weighing their relative weight in understanding the degrees of contingency to which

they're exposed and sometimes we may claim knowledge of the future on other grounds altogether

from revelation or second side in which case our conviction does not depend on our capacity to predict

but all forms of future knowledge of any degree of certainty or

uncertainty are subject to this one condition they are not knowledge of fact

as knowledge of the past is fact fact means done

and what will happen is by definition what has not been done which is why

the conception of time that depicts us in the middle of a line that stretches equally out on either side indefinitely

cannot begin to convey the reality of our temporal existence which is an interface between what is

closed and done and what is open and waiting to do all those teasing questions of science

fiction about whether we could change the future if we only knew it can be given quite a short answer i

think if we knew the future as fact it would not be the future that we knew

there are no facts about the future a system of ethics that rests everything on foresight of future outcomes

such as the popular utilitarianism that came to dominate the imagination of

the english-speaking world for more than two centuries can only present us with a distorted

view of what prudence is prudence is concerned with the goods accessible to action

in the short term not with remote future goods resulting from long chains of causes and

effects long-term outcomes are much less open to view with an immediate dance of action

so that when we're solemnly told to judge what we do

by what will produce the best results in the end we're being told to anticipate what

cannot be anticipated rather than what can be anticipated what anyway could possibly count as the

end how long is the long run by which the short run must be measured

provence acting within its range is indispensable to good agency but its range is no greater than what

can be foreseen so a doctrine that in theory urges us to consider the distant horizon and judge

our actions by that tends in practice to cling to the short term and the predictable

and john stuart mill embraced this policy openly when he declared that actually living by a utilitarian ethic

meant obeying the most generally agreed rules of action which distilled the experiences

of predicting outcomes of the most people how then can ethics take note of the

future first of all it has to recognize that all societies

all individuals or planets even or galaxies

undergo crises which render the applications of practical reason effectively

impossible what do we conclude from that apocalyptic horizon before which as a

matter of fact we recognize we live one conclusion is that if practical reason cannot contemplate such scenarios

it's wrong to think about them thoughts that ethics was a description of life

in peaceful conditions what happened outside peaceful conditions well there was no concern of

everything entertain thoughts of crisis at least in public

and you can be seen as irresponsible as those who accurately foretold the economic collapse of 2008 discover to

their cost yet since modern reason cannot cut its connection with our interest in

existence and since our existential horizon is certainly not bounded by the predictable

we persist while fully accepting our ignorance of future conditions informing aspirations

in relation to them sometimes we want to benefit generations to come

sometimes we want to point the world to the kingdom of heaven these are intelligible moral actions

and in fact we usually admire them when we meet them but they certainly do not conform to the

limits of prudence existence reaches out to make commitments

for a future that cannot foresee if it could not do so there are various things we regularly do

that we wouldn't we would never marry perhaps and only rather rare rarely and

cautiously would we sign contracts well we can see why the original response

to the expansion of utilitarian modes of thought was and often has been since

an insistence on transcendent or absolute norms free of reference to particular pasts

and particular futures fiat justice as the proverb says

let right be done though the sky should form ages of moralism

usually sickened by what they take to be the arbiter-ness of public prudence and the pliable self-deceptions of pride and

rules return to a belief in duties that are known apart from reasons for them

inevitably in such ages the demands that people make on one another tend to be peremptory

and authoritarian kant's doctrine of moral law inspired 19th century europe to such a

reaction and we have now entered into another ex-such age with our well-meant but

crude doctrine of human rights but such reactions can never be more than reactions

duties may be self-evident occasionally in moments of clear self-discovery and crisis

but their self-evidence is like a flash of light that makes everything around it dark

in the end the only bulwark against arbitrariness is reasonableness and practical reasoning cannot develop

without some purchase on the future to act under the guidance of an absolute principle

unaffected by the paucity of our foresight we must know at least this one thing about the future

that by so acting we shall as jesus of nazareth expressed it save our souls

but such a faint such a faith needs to find some ground in experience what kind of ground could be available

i shall return in a moment to the forms that ground may possibly take first let me just pause a moment

over the question as to whether these two rival strategies for moral thought both of them form a list in shayla's

disparaging sense when he wrote about formalism in ethics to describe the one depending on future outcomes

which can of course never be known the other on immediate duties may not in fact be convergent strategies

text books of ethics such as professor holmes referred to in his introduction on tuesday and such as

still alas seem to govern teaching in schools and

colleges and so ensure the corruption of youth said that there were two rival theories

of practical thought deontological and teleological each professing to give a total account

of moral reason on its own formal basis these theories were such staffers dreams are made on

typical academic abstractions that no living human being could ever adopt or live by

one might even say that this two theory theory was the original formalism in ethics

propounding the false claim that moral thought was not generated by real events and real situations that

challenged our agency but was self-generated how then should we think of the

opposition of provence and principle which sometimes can be real enough

we should think of it simply like this moral reason which always mediates between the

present emerging from the past and the prospects open to the present they sometimes be led more prominently

by sets of existing circumstances and relations patterns of responsibilities may sometimes be led more

by future possibilities opportunities or dangers so there are some moral questions that

sound like how should a head teacher in a multi-racial school

respond when charges of racial bias are brought against a staff member of minority background

there are other questions that sound more like this how may we find a sustainable way of

achieving net zero emissions now either type of question may accommodate a broader or a

narrower range of factors in its answer and either type may be pursued far-sightedly

or short-sightedly the key point however is that the form of each question is

only a presenting moment in a substantial challenge to moral thought that is going to involve us if we pursue

it in a range of questions of both types competence in moral thinking requires versatility

it requires that we pay attention not only to all the material factors that condition the

situation but also in their turn to all the prospects which the situation offers so unwavering attention to the

responsibilities and the roles or a residence to be led absolutely

anywhere by an opportunity are both deficient moral postures deficient because irrational

as any attempt to stop practical reason in its movement between the past horizon and the future horizon

is bound to be irrational the disappearance of the future good

like the disappearance of the real good deprives ethics of an object the future good may disappear into

short-term anticipations based on very recent experience which is to say under recurrence

regularities that we have managed to observe or it may disappear into the vacancy of

a wholly unknown future which we cannot even begin to think about or welcome

for most deliberation we need to anticipate a definite future yet we do not need to

know that future in any detail at all a certain experience of life a certain sense of the space that lies

open to us ahead is enough for most ordinary purposes yet these anticipations are fragile

they can be swept away in a moment when things go as we didn't expect and our competence for agency

can be swept away with them to underpin agency then the disciplines of worship

encourage us to recollect goods further in the past and to entertain the hope

of a further future deliberation is very easily subverted by despair

for the horizon of the future is not always buoyant with hope but sometimes heavy with threat

jesus encourages us to grasp the future in two different ways by seizing immediate opportunities while

they are right before us and by fixing our minds on the ultimate

horizon yes at the same time he tells us to take no thought for the future

that is of course the future that is neither immediate nor ultimate that is too remote for prudent calculation but

still tempting to impractical speculation there's nothing contradictory in those

demands they correspond in fact precisely to the logic of deliberation itself

the hope of an ultimate future is and can only be a promise

not a prediction about such a promise it may seem that natural theology which

talks of only what can be said in general can say nothing

we may be tempted now to shrug our shoulders and conclude that any promise there is

will be given by revelation recognized by faith unamenable to any general description

but what cannot be described cannot be thought of if in the light of past promises claimed

and believed there is at least an outline of the shape of a promise that could illumine our ordinary

deliberations and actions faith and understanding may here as elsewhere prove

mutually supportive so let us think for a moment about one experience

as universally human and experience as could be wished which has played a very large part in

theologians attempts to describe the response to revelation and that experiences desire

only de lubac captured the theological headlines by speaking of

a natural desire for the supernatural neoplatonic metaphysics notwithstanding we ought to dismiss

any purported desire that has no reference to the future i can't desire what is

the closest parallels to desire are anxiety and hope and they too are future related

but while desire engages with the future it does not know the future it entertains possible future

knowing that they are merely possible but trusting that they are no less than

possible sometimes what we desire may also seem practical

and in that case the connection is simple between desire and

deliberation we begin to ask ourselves whether we should do something

to satisfy a desire and what we may do but desires are often impractical

offering no way through to deliberation we can desire for example the presence of someone who has died

yet what is impractical is not unthinkable we can certainly desire miracles

and we can know clearly enough what it would be like to receive the miracles we desire

and in that form desire may still assist deliberation by pointing it in the direction of belief

of hope of prayer so that even where it cannot resolve on

any other action it still finds something significant to be done

desire must always have some object that can be judged possible

if it has not it ceases to be desired and becomes despair delight becomes death longing

when all longing else is vain yates wrote so the point we came to in our last

lecture is reinforced the good that elicits our powers of agency is something

real in the broadest sense it belongs within the universe it has a

place it offers us at least ideationally something realizable

yet at the same time the object of a desire is a good that is absent desire implies wanting

in the literal sense that it's being without there's always a temptation to lose

sight of this and to expand the limits of desire too far desire does not include every kind of

appreciation of the good if it did it would embrace the present good as well as the absent good

and the price paid for such an expansion of desires to lose sight of its distinct character as an affection

desire is different from liking enjoy

willing and so on desire is a specialized emotion

we can do deliberately what we feel no desire to do and while desire may be a precipitating

factor that carries us to deliberation and action it's only one possible precipitating factor there are others

a sense of duty for example and other strong emotions may replace desire and prompting action as when we

strike out in anger weep in sorrow shout

in jubilation sometimes in the teeth of a strong desire to control ourselves so an absent good

is not a good that has no being it is a good that can be known as real but unfulfilled

pregnant with unrealized possibilities and that is how good excites desire in particular

it promises more of itself the promise is central to desire

there's a great difference between desire satisfied and a pleasant surprise in the one case the good was present to

the mind anticipated promise looked for in the other it is an unexpected discovery

what allows these ideational presences is the capacity of real goods to generate

promises of their own further realization the object of desire is desirable

because it is implied within a good already known desires are unintelligible

unless they're born out of constellations of goods that we already appreciate

elizabeth anscombe once famously illustrated this by asking philosophers to consider their

reaction to someone who claimed to desire a sorcerer of mud

to understand the desire we must see the place it occupies in the world of goods we desire to marry

because we're in love the more desire is focused on what is not there

the more arbitrary and pointless it appears even neurotic a composer

might sensibly desire to complete schubert's unfinished symphony a work of which two perfect movements

exist out of the classical symphonic four but it would make no sense at all to

desire to complete sibelius's eighth symphony a work of which the composer talked a

lot but not a note survives and perhaps none was ever written without a known good

the desire to supply what is lacking is empty and contentless but one cannot desire to supply a lack

unless the lag is actually felt and if we feel that schubert's new romantic aesthetic no longer requires a

symphony to have four movements then we will not feel that the unfinished is unfinished

so we will not desire to complete it so the question put to us by desire is this how do the goods we know and love

come to lack things and the answer brings us back to the refractive view of time goods reveal

themselves in temporal sequences appearing disappearing sometimes reappear

and desire is the heightened awareness of the coming and going of goods a distinct emotional response to

temporality it has its two characteristic notes of hope and of loss

desired goods are not only promises waiting to be fulfilled they are also reminders of things that

were good and have passed away nothing in desire itself can tell us

that the note of hope is more fundamental to it than the note of loss nothing in desire itself

can assure us that loss is always going to be open to recovery if the loss we experience when someone

dies is to be made good we shall certainly need to be told about

that from some other source desire will not tell us

but suppose we are told about it and told about it in a way that allows of belief

then we should find that the promise of an integrated final satisfaction addresses desires that we

quite ordinarily reveal and gives them a cognitive significance that they could not otherwise have

is there then a promise for history as a whole if there is it is the promise of a world

time conceived as convergent purposive and ultimately reconciled with itself

whatever promises we may encounter in the regularities of life the promise of history has to be given

us through a historical event a pointer to the end of history from within history and since history never repeats

itself our belief that we may know something of history and its end

will remain belief not without grounds but without a final verification

we shall know that a reading of history is true when its predictions have proved true

which is at no point within history the clue to history of where to find one must be given in a supremely meaning

bearing event or constellation of events which convey promise and illicit faith

this line of thought had its roots in the world of alexandria and judaism

which was open on the one hand to the teleology of plato and aristotle and open on the other to the historical

thinking of the jewish scriptures in the letter to the hebrews probably a production of alexandria and judaism

the promise of history is developed by a reading of psalm 95 a poem about the wilderness wanderings of israel that

concludes wherefore i swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest the author invites us to read this last

line in the light of another rest referred to in the

scriptures the rest of the creator at the accomplishment of creation symbolized and recalled in the

observance of the sabbath since he argues there was still another rest to be entered after the creation

was complete must we not think that the good of creation is waiting for an ultimate

fulfillment which we as the pilgrims of history are someone to enter

from a slightly different intellectual tradition one nursed in hebrew prophecy and

apocalyptic another first century writer known to us as john patmos

follows an interestingly parallel train of thought

the universe laid out in all its complex beauty and vitality before the creator's throne

is seen to yield a perpetually recurrent and repetitive hymn of praise but the prophet's view of this is

interrupted by one troubling feature in the hand of god

there is a scroll sealed seven times and the sight of it produces into tears

why because he confronts the very problem that we have been

confronting how the goodness of god in the repetitions and recurrences of reality

can ever be known if there is no clean clue to the meaning of historical events the question of the good of history then

arises from an insufficiency of the good of nature a good of nature could be good

only for an a historical observer everything that does not occur and repeat

is a threat to the sufficiency of the natural good a positive account of history is needed

not only to fulfill the promise of creation but to rescue it from reduction to meaninglessness

but this positive account is sealed against every attempt to penetrate it the only possible solution is a

proclamation week not the lion of the tribe of judah the rule of root of david has conquered

so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals out of the history of israel john

believes the meaning of world history will emerge but not in a straightforward line

not in a natural development in a celebrated transformation of images

the prophet who is being told to look for a lion sees a slain lamb

it's to that lamb in whom effective historical agency has been qualified by the experience of

historical suffering that the real disclosure of history and its

good is entrusted and that thought brings us to the third disappearing element in ethics to which

we turn in the next lecture namely that of personal agency thank you very much

thank you very much oliver that was magnificent and we look forward to about half an hour

of q and a um robin will now have switched the q a live

so please make use of the function uh in the chat

similar to the chat bar uh the q a bar simply type your questions and i will be able to see them there and to um

to to bring them to professor o'donovan's attention um

oliver while we wait for questions to come in can i ask you to comment you said that

there is nothing in desire itself that can tell us that hope is more fundamental to it than loss and that if

for example the loss of a death is to me be made good we need to be told about this from some other source desire

itself does not tell us i can i can see of course that the promise or the um the potential

actuality of a death made good of a resurrection is something that we cannot know except

from a promise or some kind of evidence that comes from without such as for example

from the resurrection of christ which we probably have in mind um do you have any sense that

the the fact of the desire of a continuance of life beyond the death that we see

again and again as irregularity in history has any kind of any kind of cognitive

value or significance where where does the desire come from if our entire experience throughout the

history of mankind has led us to see that death is the end yes yes

no i think that's a very well um take a point and we'll focus question it seems to me the situation

in which faith is placed when

confronting history with its contradictions and its meaning and its meaninglessness

is to decide to decide

whether meaning or meaninglessness has the upper hand in the end and it's that decision i

think that one cannot make simply by desiring it

desire can mislead us desire can persuade us to think we know what we don't know

it's a common psychological occurrence we know our desire is treacherous like this

but i think we can if

we have grounds for faith i think we can find supportive resonances in a natural theology of

desire which is in a thoughts that goes something like

this that if history and its life is in the end simply

swallowed up in meaninglessness then certainly our experience of desire is swallowed up with it that is to say what

i feel either means something terribly important or it doesn't mean anything at all i

mean i think that is always the point which we are we are thrust back to and it's not possible

to [Music] i think that i think this is the

argument i think i want to make it's not possible to pick and choose about meaning and meaninglessness

they are very they are very absorbing totalitarian embracing things

and once one says well of course the future of the world has no meaning it's an utterly open contingent thing one has

dumped a great deal of one's human experience without realizing it that i think is

what you're suggesting uh julius and i strongly support that thank you

we have a question from amy erickson could you speak to how disordered desire fits into your ethical framework

all feelings and desires of people it's part of our effectual resources it's

it's it's feelings are types of strength their capacities that

generate the possibility of action within us in general terms all feelings have to be

subject to thought um not that thought sometimes this is misconceived so thought is some kind of

an abstract um beautiful commander and feelings are a kind of jumble a mess of vitalities

and there is a kind of imposition like that the meaning of our feelings is imminent

to them they tell us something of themselves but we can remain in ignorance of what

they're telling us disordered desire i think is

an experience of desire that doesn't understand itself that

something is lacking in our lives we're deeply aware of something lacking in our lives

can be an intense feeling um a quite preoccupying feeling without

having the first idea really what it is that's lagging or how to set about finding out and

that is i think the meaning one gives the disorder desires it has nowhere to go it has

the desire comes the feeling can be on its own it's not self-interpreting we need to be able to interpret it

which we have to do by placing it alongside everything else we know about the worlds besides the fact

of our desire and of course the problem about very strong feelings is

that they hide from us all the other things we know about the world they push them out

so the we get to a state where the only thing we're aware of is how much we desire something

and the realities surrounding that situation don't as it were appear to us with the weight

that in other states of mind they would obviously have so recovering them

is as it were the recovery of the truth of the desire that we have that was a very nice question may i just

say thank you for that that's a very nice answer as well we have a question from bernd wonde it

goes as follows would it be a fair interpretation of your discussion of prudence deliberation

and desire to say that we must act confidently echoing the reformation distinction

between certitudo and securitas as opposed to thinking of time in terms of something to control or be controlled

by what i find when professor vanovich asks me a question is very often

that he is gently pointing me along a line that i ought to have gone and

failed to go and i suspect that this is another such moment um

i can see the fruitfulness of that obviously yes prudence

serves uh let me just think how to put this best prudence is not an end in itself it

serves our capacity to act and our capacity to act is not complete unless we can act in confidence and faith

exactly what we can say we know about what we're doing will vary from case to case sometimes we

have to knowingly take risks yet there is still something

we can be confident about even in the decision to take risk and that i think is

the sort of insight that um luther and his best successes have been able to bring

to this question of action the nature of confidence asking it faith is the root of action

and prudence is as it were giving us the resources for an act of faith i think i would take

it a little bit like that i think banovic himself could probably take it on much more effectively but that's as

far as i can go with it thank you and bernd if you would like to follow up

please please do so in the in the q a bar before we take a new question i have a

follow-up from somebody to your last answer to amy's question you answered that question on disordered

desire with reference to desires which are too strong what do you make of desires which are

too weak or too inconstant that's a desire is clearly eliciting some very nice questions i mean people

i'm going straight to the point here um thank you for that um what i say to that

is exactly the same as i say about desires that are too strong excellent

very good i'm glad we've settled that all right then we come to the next question from alan strange from loven um

following up from from tuesday so we have a future that is pointed to and a pointer within history

but what meaning does this give to present lordship of the one who is resurrected and was already resurrected

within history so we have a question about what what meaning does this give to the present lordship of the one

resurrected does what we have heard have a pneumatology i

shall want to say more to this um in a later lecture particularly in lectures six the last lecture of the

series in which i want to explore the pneumatology of ethics um

a bit further but so i think if i may ask alan just to hold back in patience just for a moment

i shall um say yes it obviously does um i mean action is

uh it its effect is in being present and available to us in our action

as we uh as we grasp and comprehend this the meaning

of this sign and the meaning of the history in which we act um

how we grasp it requires more care and i will talk about that in the sixth lecture

ellen we look forward to having you with us um until then and for that we have a question from johnny walker at

princeton how does the necessity of an ultimate future for practical reason as