By DONALD DeMARCO
The first law of nature is self-preservation. The highest law of morality is self-sacrifice. What the content these two sentences makes abundantly clear is that the life of the human being is one of perpetual tension. Self-preservation and self-sacrifice are not exactly on the same page. However, it is important to note that this tension is not a contradiction, but a paradox. A contradiction would make man an absurdity, continually and incurably at odds with himself, as several atheistic existentialist philosophers have contended. He would be a being without hope.
A paradox appears to be a contradiction but conceals a deeper truth. Indeed, “truth consists of paradoxes,” wrote Carl Sandburg. But he was eager to point out how much they resembled paradoxes since they bind together “two facts that stand on opposite hilltops and across the intervening valley call each other liars.”
Shakespeare could not have framed the term “paradox” more elegantly than when he described man as “the quintessence of dust” (Hamlet Act 2, scene 2).
Quintessence has rich and lofty meaning. It was, for the ancients, the fifth essence (after earth, air, fire, and water) which was the substance of the imperishable stars.
“Earthlings though we are,” wrote the late Ralph McInerny, “unimaginable without feet and arms and ears, all of which will one day turn to dust, we are diamonds whose facets give off light and darkness.”
Or, as Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed it in his own inimitable way: “This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, is immortal diamond.”
G.K. Chesterton was a master of the paradox, but was intolerant of the contradiction. He envisioned man as a creature of the twilight, being part earthly and part mystical. “Mysticism keeps men sane,” he averred. “As long as you have mystery, you have health; when you destroy mystery you have morbidity. . . . It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man.”
What is apparent lies on the surface; one must search deeper to locate the truth.
God knew what He was doing when He created man as a natural being who strives for a supernatural end. He did not intend the call to self-sacrifice to be contrary to man’s natural instinct for self-preservation. A powerful instinct for self-preservation, embedded in man’s nature as it is, is needed for him to persist in living so that he has the time and opportunity to achieve his higher purpose. His strong desire not to die, then, is not self-justifying.
It is needed to provide the ground for something other than itself. Man is a being in the world but not of the world. He gains his life by losing it. He is both individualistic and communal. He has his nature; but he also has his ideals. He must preserve his life to attain his end.
God, Himself, is a paradox. He is of one substance, but is triune. Christ is human and divine, temporal and eternal, the Alpha and the Omega. The paradox seems to be a contradiction, but on further inspection, it reveals a truth. Man is not simply an individual who, by nature, seeks only to preserve his life, but a person who integrates nature with spirit and becomes a whole person who lives with an abiding concern for others.
“Individuality,” as Nikolai Berdyaev has remarked, “is a naturalistic and biological category, while personality is a religious and spiritual one. . . . Personality is a task to be achieved.” We are natural at birth, but not virtuous until later.
We may describe sheer individuality as that by which one is excluded from everyone else. It is the narrowness of the ego whose desires are limited to self-gratification. It is natural, but nothing more than natural. Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas), the corporate raider in the film Wall Street, provided us with an exceptionally clear image of selfish disregard for others.
“Greed is good, greed is right, greed works,” he told his stockholders. “Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” Gecko’s comeuppance in the movie was a convincing refutation of his philosophy and a good example of bad economics.
On the other hand, the distinguished economist, Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations and in his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, makes it clear that for capitalism to succeed, self-sacrifice must offset greed and self-interest. The latter work begins with the follow assertion:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.”
Our nature is always with us. But it is a starting point, not an end. It is something to move out from. Self-sacrifice fulfills the meaning of self-preservation. We need to remain alive in order to give to others. The person, in the strict sense of the term, is an integration of body and soul, nature and purpose, individuality and communal obligation. For St. Thomas Aquinas, “The person is that which is most noble and most perfect in all of nature” (Summa Theologiae, I, 29, 3.).
The person is a paradoxical reality. The two great sins are to view him simplistically as merely a natural being and nothing more or as an angel and nothing less. We are dust, indeed. But we are dust with a destiny.
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest book, Apostles of the Culture of Life, is posted on amazon.com. His forthcoming book, How to Navigate through Life, is in production and is soon to be released.)
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