John Shea OSA: “A Paradigm of the Fully Human.”
Epiphany’s Challenge 2024
Dear Bishops of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,
I am sending you a current letter to Pope Francis and one to the members of his Council of Cardinals along with an article, “A Paradigm of the Fully Human.”
For years I have been working on a developmental understanding of what it means to be a fully human person. It is a natural-law, bedrock-of-democracy, bedrock of sustainability view: the wholeness of integrity and the relatedness of mutuality grow inseparably together. It is a common-sense understanding of how we mature.
A self that is integral and mutual—taken together—begets a self that acts in care and justice. Being caring and acting justly—taken together—begets a self that is loving and peaceful. Love and peace—taken together—is the epitome of the fully human, the self most prized and most powerful, the self actively opposing the hatred and violence we find in the world as well as in ourselves.
This dynamic, “whole-person” view of human development—of men and women alike—transforms the separate, stand-alone “individual self” with its autonomy, rationality and freedom bequeathed by philosophy, anthropology, and the Enlightenment. It offers us a developing “relational self” of integrity and mutuality with hallmarks of empathy, intimacy, and care—a self, says David Tracy, “radically related to reality.” I would suggest that this is also a self that easily pictures Jesus and all of us as fully human.
If our church has been steeped in misogyny and patriarchal thinking ab initio, then looking at women in terms of the history of the diaconate is going to reflect that. This thinking is only a disgrace. We need a “church-in-the-modern-world” understanding. If you have a few minutes, can you read the enclosed article?
Vatican Council II addresses us as adults, Can the Synodal Assembly of this October do the same?
Peace,
John J. Shea, O.S.A., M.P.S., Ph.D., MSW (Fordham University, 1981-2002; Boston College, 2003-2012)
Epiphany 2024
Dear Cardinal O’Malley,
Yet once again, I write to you as a member of the Council of Cardinals asking you to seriously address the church’s decision that women lack the body-and-soul integrity needed for priestly ordination. Crying out for reform—ecclesia semper reformanda—this ruling is deforming the church’s identity and confounding its synodality.
Let me recall one more time Pope Francis’ opening address to the Synod on the Family in 2014. He told the bishops to speak “freely,” “boldly,” and “without fear.” It was truly extraordinary. He had to ask his fellow bishops—grown men and the church’s teachers—to speak honestly with each other. Still, this intervention, no doubt embarrassing for all. gave hope that one day honest dialogue might be possible.
If it could not be more obvious to you that no serious thinker about human development sees women as less developed in body and soul than men—less adult, moral, religious, intelligent, caring, just, loving, peaceful, or wise—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If a woman provides pastoral care as well as a man, if nothing in Scripture or tradition keeps women from ordination, if casting women in opposition—as complementary, extra-human, not in persona Christi, Marian vs. Petrine, or in seriously weird nuptial symbolism—is not ad rem, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If women in priesthood is critical for the church’s future—if hierarchy hopping around on one foot is not just hopelessly unbalanced but also aids and abets betrayal of trust and a criminality crippling the church’s authority, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If you believe the initial, still-standing theological explanation of the 1970’s and 1980’s Vatican—women cannot be ordained because they are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus”—affirms multi-generational blindness, deep-in-the-bone misogyny, and centuries-celebrated patriarchal hubris, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If you see the 1994 letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: 1) as deliberately written in the face of—and arguably to cut off—serious scriptural- theological dialogue already taking place; 2) as the fruit of doctrinal fiat not dialogue; and 3) as completely blocking any future study or discussion—let alone any informed, gender inclusive, or synodal dialogue—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If there is some reason why women fully created in the image and likeness of the Father are somehow not fully created in the image and likeness of the Son—if Jesus is made to image of a Father who is bio- logically male—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If to this day the sacred liturgy persists in distorting our Three-in-One God—if a huge patriarchal beam remains stuck in the church’s eye, worshipping the Father as male, the Son as male, and the Holy Spirit as male—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If you are alarmed by the faithful—old and young—leaving the church in droves because of women seen unworthy of priesthood—if a “patriarchal Jesus” severs the roots of respect, trust, and inclusion for the whole church—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If banning women from ordination is taken—in the church and in the world—as silently affirming and furthering women’s inferiority and as subtlety justifying femicide, trafficking, rape, domestic violence, and other atrocities, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
Cardinal O’Malley, are you insensitive to the ugly, degrading, sexiest lies St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many other sainted bishops and theologians have conjured up ab initio about women? Is this misogyny—Vatican at-home—a “holy order”? Is it a sacrament? Is Blessed Misogyny the “ordinary infallible teaching” of the church? Now—after centuries of lies, projection, and denigration—if the sitting Synod of Bishops is an apt forum to apologize, tell the truth, and make amends, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
If you continue to act as if women are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus,” will you state what they lack? Will clinging to centuries-old patriarchal detritus animate today’s church? Will keeping women in mindless, myopic, developmental limbo herald Good News? If normalizing the dehumanization of girls and women is only heartless, cruel, and shameful, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.
Is there a better time for collegial voices to be heard? Like the reformation of inclusion so critical in the infant church, will you and your fellow bishops see, hear, and name what Pope Francis does not see, hear, and name? Will you speak freely, boldly, and without fear?
Sincerely,
John J. Shea, O.S.A.
P.S. Enclosed is a developmental, natural-law, bedrock-of-democracy view of the human: the wholeness of integrity and the relatedness of mutuality grow together only inseparably. This “whole-person” view of development upgrades the separate, “individual self” of the culture to a “relational self”—a self like Jesus and like us as fully human.
Copy: Pope Francis
Epiphany 2024
Dear Pope Francis
I write to you yet again. I hope you are well. I keep praying for you. Your concern for injustice, migrants, the poor, reform of the Vatican, environment, climate change, and synodality is quite exceptional. Enclosed are a letter to each member of your Council of Cardinals and an article that describes human integrity and mutuality together.
In the beginning of your papacy, you addressed the need for honest dialogue in the church. It was quite encouraging. You used to say: “dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.” You even said: “dialogue fearlessly.”
On the ordination of women, however, there is only silence. You urge no dialogue at all—let alone anything synodal or gender inclusive. You are our leader, our Supreme Bridgebuilder. When will you call for the reform most critical for the church’s oneness and its leavening of the world?
How can our church be whole if every woman in it is “not fully in the likeness of Jesus”? Why the imago Dei of women ignored, disparaged, and nullified by you and the Vatican? What is it that keeps women from fully imaging our Three-In-One God? Will women’s integral development ever be included in your signature “integral human development”?
Will an intelligent view of gender ever dawn on a tragically uninformed, indolent, sleep-walked, dogma-feared magisterium? Will today’s Vatican misogyny—robust, centuries-encrusted, unjust, puerile, and degrading— thwart the Spirit’s animation of the church now and for ages to come?
Pope Francis, if the clericalism you love to rail against is a symptom, will you decry the underlying disease? Will you ever liberate servant ministry from patriarchal conceit? Will you insist on being a Patriarchal Pontiff who honors male gonadal difference but fails to honor the obvious body- and-soul integrity of the millions and millions of women in your care?
How long this confounding contradiction? How long this confounding violation of solidarity? How long this confounding defenestration of women from a church with no windows. How long, how long, how long?
Sincerely,
John J. Shea, O.S.A.
Copy: Each Member of the Council of Cardinals
A PARADIGM OF THE FULLY HUMAN: INTEGRITY AND MUTUALITY, CARE AND JUSTICE, LOVE VS. HATRED AND PEACE VS. VIOLENCE
John Shea
Independent Scholar
This article is a paradigm of full human development that is holistic, inherently relational, and morally mature. Integrity and mutuality, foundationally human as a process-paradox (each characteristic unique yet evolving together) is the essence of the fully human. Care and justice together, foundationally human as a process-paradox, is integrity and mutuality in action. Love and peace together, foundationally human as a process-paradox, is the enduring effect of care and justice that is an ongoing negation of hatred and violence. This interrelated developmental paradigm—at times simple, at times profound, at times challenging, at times courageous—has implications of for all of our concerns and endeavors—for relationships micro to macro, for human rights, citizenship, democracy, sustainability, and most crucially, for the choices we continuously make in pursuing either love and peace or hatred and violence.
Keywords: fully human, morality, integrity, mutuality, care, justice, love, peace, hatred, and violence
Introduction
We may believe that human development is important to understand, but rarely do we describe this development in its fullness. We think that being adult and being moral are included in maturity, but rarely do we see these two notions entailing each other. We talk about the human in particle-self, non-developmental terms like rationality, autonomy, and freedom, but rarely do we define its fullness as a living process of wholeness and relatedness together, each involving, evoking, sustaining, and furthering the other. We may easily consider both justice and care as essentially human, but rarely do we acknowledge the primacy of care. We may come to value love and peace as perhaps the two most de- sired things in life, but rarely do we see them in the light of development, let alone as the epitome of the fully human. We may be very concerned about the amount of hatred and violence in the world, but rarely do we see love and peace vs. hatred and violence as a dialectic at the core of human development.
This article proposes a paradigm of the fully human as a three-in-one interactive pro- cess. Being integral and relating mutually to the other—paradoxically together—allows us to act in care and justice. Acting in care and justice—paradoxically together—allows us to embody love and peace. Being loving and peaceful—paradoxically together—is the pinnacle of the fully human that actively negates hatred and violence (see Shea, 2018).
Angyal (1941/1972), an early holistic thinker, talks in Foundations for a Science of Personality about life as a process that takes place “between the organism and the environment” (p. 31-2; see also Blasi, 1976). Human development lies in two basic trends. The first is the trend toward autonomy, “a tendency to achieve, dominate, and master the environment” (p. 48). The second is the trend toward homonomy (a “law of likes”), a need for connection to something larger than the self, be that represented “by a social unit—family, clan, nation—by a cause, by an ideology, or by a meaningfully ordered universe” (Angyal, 1974, p. 45). Angyal finds that although autonomy and homonomy seem to be a “dichotomy of diametrically opposed forces,” paradoxically they only develop in harmony with each other (1972, p. 173).
In “Naturalistic Conceptions of Moral Maturity,” Walker and Pitts (1998) describe two over-all characteristics people use to de- scribe the mature moral person. On the one hand, this person has “a range of strongly held values and principles” together with “a strong sense of self or personal agency” as part of “the integrity” regarded as essential to moral excellence. On the other hand, this person has “notions of communion” and an “other-orient- ed compassion and care” entailing “consider- ate action and the nurturing of relationships through faithfulness and reliability” (p. 414- 415). The authors are describing a profound paradox of moral maturity: “integrity” goes together naturally with “other-oriented com- passion and care” (see also Frimer & Walker, 2008; Frimer, Walker, Dunlop, Lee, & Riches, 2011; Guisinger & Blatt, 1994; Surrey, 1991).
Integrity and Mutuality
In The Grace of Great Things, Grudin (1990) offers a three-fold definition of integrity that is a nuanced understanding of its meaning. First, integrity is “an inner psycho- logical harmony, or wholeness” (p. 73). This definition is primary. In becoming integral, we become our own cohesive, felt-from-within, self-reflective, self-authoring whole. Integrity, as Blasi (2005) puts it, is about a “the organized unity in the sense of self” (p. 95). Not made up of isolated, disconnected, or un- acknowledged parts, an integral self “owns all of its pieces—the loved and the unloved, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, the good and the bad” (Shea, 2018, p. 10). Integrity as owning all the pieces can often be a challenging personal drama, its “is” and “is not” in intimate struggle. Integrity is not righteousness or perfection; “we are always, in effect,” says Beebe (1992), “restoring our integrity from some attempt at compromise” (p. 40). Vulnerability is included in integrity (Noam, 1993; McCoy, 2013; Brown, 2012) as is knowing that we can suffer from the “undigested lumps of life” (Mahedy, 1986, p. 48). “It is always the job of integrity,” says Beebe (1999), “to embrace the limitations of character” (p. 624).
Second, integrity, is “conformity of personal expression with psychological reality—of act with desire, of word with thought, of face with mind, of the outer with the inner self” (Grudin, 1990, p.73). Although this definition is popular in the culture, it is secondary and derivative. When integrity is seen as the outer revealing the inner, the focus remains on the individual. We admire a person’s hones- ty, sincerity, authenticity, or courage, but we may not see how inherently relational these characteristics are; it is easy to miss how they implicate, support, and confirm the other. Schlenker, Miller, & Johnson (2009) find that “integrity is uniquely important across situations as a lynchpin for social interactions” (p. 321). Genuine integrity, notes Parizeau (1999), always “provides the basis for reliance, trust, friendship and love” (p. 165). Integrity, Rayner (1999) points out, necessarily “steers the individual to behave with truth, humanity, fairness or responsibility when dealing with issues that impact on other people” (p. 193). In other words, integrity is a process-paradox with mutuality (Shea, 2003). The fully human does not develop as a separate self. It is al- ways an integral self-in-mutuality.
Third, integrity is “an extension of whole- ness and conformity in time, through thick and thin” (Grudin, 1990, p. 74). Over time, the different “pieces” of the self must be owned and kept connected. Over time, the outer must be in harmony with the inner. Integrity is the challenge to “stand for something and remain steadfast when confronted with adversity or temptation” (Paine, 2005, p. 248). “Acting morally,” notes Noam (1993), “involves taking a stand, often an unpopular one.” (p, 219). An integral self is able “to stand on its own two feet,” “to be its own person,” “to have its own voice.” In concluding his three-fold definition, Grudin (1990) states: “integrity may be defined as psychological and ethical wholeness, sustained in time” (p.74). The human and the ethical develop together. If owning all of one’s pieces makes us adult, it also—surprisingly perhaps—makes us moral (Shea, 2018).
Is mutuality a process-paradox with integrity? This question is critical for developmental theory, especially in a culture that tends to see selfishness and aggression as evolutionary inheritance and that at the same time tends to see the person as a stand-alone self-needing to relate to a surrounding world of others in what is known at the self-other dichotomy. Normally, mutuality means a basic respect and appreciation of one self for the another, an empowering exchange, a back-and-forth, a dialectic that tends to further the other even as it furthers the self. “Mutuality,” says Olthuis (1997), “is attunement of expression, recognition, and desire, a dance in which the differing gifts and needs of each person are simultaneously honored, recognized, and often met. We recognize each other, seek each other’s good, identify-with each other—in the process loving the other as we love ourselves.” (p. 147).
“The basic premise of self-in-relation,” observes Huff (1987), “is that persons in a mutual, empathic relationship evolve in the context of that relationship, and that complete selves can evolve only in such growth-enhancing relationships” (p. 161). Similarly, Nothwehr (1998) holds that mutuality is “the sharing of ‘power with’ by and among all parties in a relationship” and it “recognizes the wholeness and particular experience of each participant toward the end of optimum human flourishing” (p. 233). Both writers see mutuality as: a) essential to human development; b) going together with integrity; and c) entailing empathy and only flowing from it. Mutuality can be understood as a process-paradox with integrity in which other and self implicate, evoke, strengthen, and further each other. The fully human is best understood as a mutual self-in-integrity.
“Crucial to a mature sense of mutuality,” insists Jordan (1991b) “is an appreciation of the wholeness of the other person, with a special awareness of the other’s subjective experience” (p. 82). Being mutual involves having empathy enough for the self’s and the other’s “pieces” to be caring and just (Jordan, 1991a, 1997; see also Aragona, Kotzalidis, & Puzella, 2013; Ciaramicoli, 2001; Rogers, 1980; Selman, 1980). Often, how- ever, an empowering exchange that furthers the self is not guaranteed. In fact, mutuality need not be symmetrical at all—as may be the case, for example, in parent-child inter- actions or with someone severely impaired. Mature mutuality involves “a generosity of spirit” (Makoff & Read, 2017, p. 252). It is an inner welcoming, a hospitality, a caring attitude, a respect for the other’s needs (see Erikson, 1963; McAdams, 2015). It may involve taking a risk; it may involve sacrifice (Kunz, 1998); it may be “quite different in form, quantity, or degree for each party” (Aron, 1996, p. xi). When mutuality extends to different societal groups or the ecosystem (Phillips, 2019), it is still an empathic relating in care and justice.
Care and Justice
Although we can see that justice and care are at the heart of maturity and flow naturally from integrity and mutuality, how we define these notions is critical for understanding human-moral development. Over the last forty years, there has been a serious debate about the meaning and place of justice and care. Characterizing them in terms of relationship, Ruddick (1995) says: “From the perspective of justice, relationships require restraint of one’s own aggression, intrusion, and appropriation and respect for the autonomy and bodily integrity of others” (p. 204). This justice perspective, setting the debate’s parameters, was associated primarily with the reasoning-thinking of Kohlberg (1981, 1984) and was seen to be more prevalent in men than in women. “From the perspective of care, relationships require attentiveness to others and response to their needs (Ruddick, 1995, p. 204). A clear alternative to Kohlberg, this care perspective was found in the related- ness-thinking of Gilligan (1982, 1984) and a host of feminist thinkers (for example, Baier, 2005; Benhabib, 1987; Kittay, 2011; Tronto, 1993; Walker, 1992). This relatedness-thinking was seen as more prevalent in women than in men.
Although justice as restraint and respect and care as attentiveness and response are appropriate descriptions, in the culture and in academia these two notions often remain framed in dichotomy (Blum, 1988; Held, 1995). Justice—highly valued as an excellent description of morality and maturity—is impartial, disembodied, and guided by fixed principles that are universal. It is expected, in fact, that justice be abstract, objective, rational, and impersonal. Care—bodily particular, taken for granted, and not that important—is seen as a familiar virtue, a kindly response to the physical needs of those who cannot help themselves. A pale moon to justice’s powerful sun, care is said
to be concrete, subjective, emotional, and personal. In the culture and academia, both justice and care—connected as opposites— are stereotyped and quite skewed.
In maturity, however, care and justice are rightsized, somewhat reversed, and much easier to recognize. They are also gender inclusive, clearly distinct, yet intimately connected. Ruddick (1995) observes: “neither can be replaced by or subsumed under the other” (p. 204). Hekman (1995) says, they “inhabit” each other (p, 32). In empathy, understood as “the emotionally tinged and the rationally grasped,” care and justice seem to naturally surface together (Shea, 2018, p. 162; see Hoffman, 2000). A fully human self is a caring justice or a just caring. In family life and in all other relating, the more whole we become the more caring-separated-from-justice lies on a continuum with imposition at one end and horrific exploitation at the other. Likewise, the more whole we become the more justice-separated-from-caring lies on a continuum with disrespect at one end and horrific dehumanization at the other. This understanding of care and justice together resonates with the principled morality of Kohlberg (1984) and with adult development thinking on post-formal operations (Basseches, 1984; Commons, Sinnott, Richards, & Armon, 1989; Labouvie Vief, 2015; Souvaine, Lahey, & Kegan, 1990).
In its fullness, “care is attending to the needs, rights, and freedoms of the self and the other for wholeness” (Shea, 2018, p. 79). Needs are the “quintessential object” of care, and they stretch from micro to macro in human affairs, “from child-rearing practices and intimate relationships, to social services and education and political deliberations” (Sevenhuijsen, 1998, p. 137; see Held, 2006; Mahon & Robinson, 2011). To care, says Mayeroff (1972), “I must understand the other’s needs and I must be able to respond properly to them” (p. 19). Caring adults, observes
Hollway (2006), are: a) capable of “reciprocal, interdependent care receiving and care giving”; b) provide the “the non-negotiable, asymmetrical” care required of mothers, fathers, and others; c) are capable of “self care”; and d) extend their care “to both human and non-human objects” (p. 18). In full adulthood, finds Erikson (1964): “Care is the widening concern for what has been generated by love, necessity, or accident; it overcomes the am- bivalence adhering to irreversible obligation” (p. 131). In maturity, the need for care is the reason for care.
In its fullness, “justice is respect, fairness, and equity in caring for the needs, rights, and freedoms of the self and the other for whole- ness” (Shea, 2018, p. 80). As an adult and moral person, to be just means to be evenhanded in attending to the self and to the other, and it means that we are all equal when it comes to the consideration our needs, rights, and freedoms deserve. Nuancing equality, equity sees that the actual needs for wholeness that each of us has may be different and that, as Piaget (1965) says, the “real situation” of the self and of the other must be taken into account (p. 383). “Justice,” says Caputo (1993), “is there, on the spot, in the individual situation” (p. 98). It is never done to “abstractions,” notes Bubeck (1995), but to “concrete, real people” (p. 215). The respect, fairness, and equity of justice are merely idealized concepts unless they are rooted in care for an actual self and an actual other—my relating to myself, to this person, this institution, this animal, this aspect of the ecology.
Mature care and justice—together as a process-paradox—is a dialectic in which each notion retains its meaning while also implicating, evoking, strengthening, and furthering the other. Care is the reason for justice, and justice is the measure of caring; caring gives meaning to justice, and justice brings order to care. Held (2006) notes: “unless we have strong motives to care about our fellow human
beings and unless we value this caring, we will not care whether their rights are respect- ed or not” (p. 89). Heidegger (1962) sees care as the essential “source” of our humanness (1962, p. 243). Agreeing, Noddings (2005) says: “It is the mark of being human” (p. 18). Justice, with its standard of equal rights, could not be more quintessentially human (Cohen, 2008). Asked what he understood wisdom to be, a seventy-five-year-old participant in the Harvard Grant Study on men’s development responded simply: “Empathy through which one must synthesize both care and justice” (Vaillant, 2012, p. 186).
If we are fortunate enough—and many of us are not—care and justice are bedrock in human development from birth. Erikson (1963) shows that we begin to embody these two hallmarks of the human from those who first attend to our needs. Later, as we begin to relate to the other, Piaget (1965) shows that care and justice naturally go together, that fairness is a calculus for care. If we had siblings, for example, we may have cried in early indignation: “He got a bigger piece than I did!” Much more foundational than just two virtues among many, care and justice tutor each other from the beginning as we make our way toward being mature and moral. It is this embodied care and justice—the backbone of personal responsibility—that begets integrity and mutuality, and it is integrity and mutuality, negotiated together, that begets care and justice. If human fullness and human strength go together, a case can be made that there is nothing more humanly powerful than care and justice acting in concert (see, for example, Afuape, 2011; Pearlman, 2012; Sullivan & Tifft, 2008; Zehr, 2005).
Love vs. Hate, Peace vs. Violence
How can we understand the love and peace that together are the epitome of the fully human? How can we understand the hatred and violence that together are so destructive
of that development? If we are concerned about ourselves, our institutions, our plan- et, and the future of humanity, these are the question that we must seriously pursue. The best answer to these questions—the answer most human, most relational, and most developmentally informed—is that to understand care and justice is to understand love and hatred as well as to understand peace and violence. The connections could not be clearer. The seeds of hatred and violence lie in failure to receive, experience, trust in, or pursue the care and justice that makes for wholeness in the self and mutuality with the other. The active meaning of love and peace surfaces in the care and justice that makes for wholeness in the self and mutuality with the other.
Love and peace—going together—is our humanness at its best, and it serves social justice, the common good, and the promise of human survival and flourishing. Hatred and violence—going together—is always a rejection of care and justice for the self or the other. Failing to take hatred and violence into account as anything more than incidental, or embarrassing, or an unfortunate occurrence, or a strange aberration not only flies in the face of reality, but it leaves us without a way of responding developmentally and intelligently to these two devastating arrests of the human.
Hatred—contempt, loathing, vilification, or out-and-out rage wanting to obliterate its object—is passion that is usually self-justifying, easily irrational, and often quite contagious. Its aim is, as Rempel and Burris (2005) say, “diminishing or destroying the object’s well-being” (p. 300). Haters, suggests Havel (1996), believe that “an evil world and nasty people refuse to yield them what belongs to them by right” (p. 21). Hatred feeds on it- self, mushrooms in a group, and can become powerful to the point of being unstoppable. It goes together with violence; where there is violence hatred is already in the room.
Discounting empathy, haters make them- selves immune to care and justice for the other and then for the self. As the opposite of love, hate is an inversion of the care and jus- tice essential for holding onto and furthering our humanness. Over time, hate hollows out the integral and mutual self.
Violence—abuse, bullying, greed, torture, rape, murder, or genocide—is our humanity in its developmental failure. Taking hatred’s lead, violence sabotages empathic connection. It divides, splits apart, tears down, severs, and dismembers. Human violence “does not know,” says Sartre (1992), “how to put things together” (p. 173). A black hole at the heart of the human, violence attacks our wholeness directly—physically, psychologically, and morally—doing whatever it can either to break apart the “pieces” of our integrity or to keep them from coming together in the first place. At the same time, it destroys mutuality—at best treating the other with indifference or disdain and at worst obliterating the other in total destruction. In the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Tutsi, ostensibly separate from the Hutu, were said to be “cockroaches” and then systematically exterminated. “Living tissue of connection and difference must be cauterized,” says Michael Ignatieff (1997), “before a neighbor is reinvented as an enemy” (p.53-54). As the opposite of peace, violence annihilates integrity and mutuality, literally making our wholeness and relatedness to be nothing.
Love—an eager quest for the wholeness of the self and the other—is perhaps the best description we have of care and justice working together to bring about integrity and mutuality. Anderson, Foley, Miller-McLemore, & Schreiter (2004) point out that “the aim of all genuine love” is brought about “by closely attending to one another” (p.6). Dominian (1985) says: “Mutuality requires that all love, including sacrificial love, be mutual in so far as greater and more complete
mutuality is its goal” (p. 267). Love affirms and fosters the other’s fullness of life even as it affirms and fosters the self’s fullness of life. Love in practice is care and justice together. “Love,” says Angyal (1974), “is not ‘blind’ but visionary: it sees into the very heart of its object, and sees the ‘real self’ behind and in the midst of the frailties and shortcomings” (p. 47). This love—impossible without self-empathy and empathy for the other—is attentive and respectful, intelligent and informed, and felt as inner and relational. It responds to the needs of the self and the other and it does this with careful attending and respect. When love is present, hatred has no opening, no foothold in the human. Love risks for the sake of human possibility. As the opposite of hatred, it nourishes and transforms all on the journey of integrity and mutuality.
Peace—an at-oneness within and with- out—flows naturally from the care and justice we offer and receive (Shea, 2018). Peace is care and justice together, and it is alive in wholeness and mutuality. Along with love, peace is always inner and relational. As the opposite of violence, peace comes from the self’s careful attending and respect for the self and the other. Made real by all the myriad ways we engage in taking care and being just, peace is a felt connection, a sense of rightness, aweness, a harmony, a calmness, a confirming satisfaction the responsible self often experiences as incomparable. Being adult, being moral, and being a peaceful and loving person are together as one. Acting in care and justice is the best strategy—and perhaps the only strategy—that counteracts hatred and violence and allows the fully human to thrive (see Danesh, 2013; Galtung, 2010; Staub, 2003, 2018; Zembylas, 2013). The power of love and peace is the power of care and justice, and the power of care and justice is the power of integrity and mutuality.
Conclusions
First, this holistic and relational paradigm lets us see integrity and mutuality not only as the goal of becoming fully human but also as the process leading to that goal. In practice as well as in theory, human wholeness is only pursued by relating in mutuality to whomever or whatever is other. The way to full humanness lies in integrity and mutuality developing together.
Second, integrity and mutuality as a process-paradox of the fully human has profound implications for all our human endeavors including: education, ethics, politics, psychotherapy, anthropology, psychology, economics, business, spiritualty, and religion.
Third, care and justice—the lynchpin of the fully human—describes responsibility at every level, from the intrapersonal, to the intimate, to the social, to the communal, to the national, to the international, to the glob- al and beyond. It is care and justice together that brings us together, holds us together, and lets us move forward together in responsive human connection in a way nothing else can.
Fourth, knowing that morality is intrinsic to the fully human is without price. What we think of as morality in the culture—often an imposed moralism or an inherited super-ego—may be part of growing up, but by itself it is not a generous guide as we continue to mature. Adult morality is neither about the law, nor about cultural norms, nor about universal moral principles. These are helpful as examples for reflection, but they do not make for moral maturity. Living morality is about empathy-rooted integrity and mutuality working together.
Fifth, seeing love as an eager quest for the wholeness of the self and the other and seeing peace as an at-oneness within and without are definitions that are practical as well as foundational. When we are loving and peaceful, we are fully human. It should not be surprising that the things we often come to value most in
life are also the hallmarks of our humanness. Amazingly powerful, love and peace is ultimately what being human is about.
Sixth, it is a mistake to talk about human-moral development without taking hatred and violence structurally into account. Hatred and violence together assures the loss of the human within the human. In becoming fully human, we confront such dehumanization.
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