Compassion is so salient in so
many religions that it is natural to assume that religious conduct is moral,
which is to say that it issues in ethical conduct. Yet, as Kierkegaard
emphasizes in Fear and Trembling, the divine decree that Abraham
receives in the Book of Genesis translates into murder on the (universally
accessible) level of ethics. In being almost going through with sacrificing his
only son, Isaac, Abraham is guilty of attempted murder, which is unethical.
Abraham’s faith in the validity of the divine decree can thus be
distinguished from morality. Unlike ethics, religion is sourced beyond the
limits of human cognition, perception, and emotions, and is the domain is thus
transcendent even as it is also immanent in the world. Even though ethical
principles and faith can dovetail, as in five of the Ten Commandments, it is
important that the two domains—morality and religion—are regarded as distinct,
and thus with their own distinctive bases and criteria owing to the respective
natures of each domain. In his book, A Brief History of Everything, Ken
Wilber attempts a mega-synthesis of many fields of knowledge. Such a broad
project carries with it the pitfall of making conjectures that draw on or
involve domains of knowledge outside of one’s own. I think the risk of such
over-stepping is significant coming from both vantage-points in morality and
religion (i.e., ethics and theology) when the two domains are mingled or
intertwined without due recognition of how they are sui generis, of
their own genus (type). Wilber even conflates a third domain, that of
psychology, with those of ethics and religion. I begin by looking at morals and
religion in general, holding off psychology until I address Wilber’s theory
specifically.
In Christianity, it seems at
first glance that it would be more difficult to differentiate the two domains,
for God, which both Paul and Augustine wrote is love itself, lies in
neighbor-love, which presumably includes compassion and thus results in ethical
conduct. However, both in theory and practice, unethical conduct may (and has)
stemmed from defending the faith, such as in the Crusades. It has been too easy
for Christian leaders to relegate or dismiss outright the love-thy-enemy
preachment in the Gospels to defend Christ (or His Church) from internal and
external threats. Nevertheless, it is difficult to square of love of neighbor,
which especially includes (or is epitomized by) love of enemies, with (verbally
or physically) attacking and even killing detractors instead of helping them at
a human level. Even if Christian faith is ever characterized explicitly and
foremost in terms of compassion especially to people who insult or even go
after us, faith and morality can still be distinguished as being in two
distinct domains whose respective foundations and criteria differ qualitatively
(i.e., fundamentally). Most crucially, distinctly religious faith has a
transcendent reference point, or source, that is beyond the limits of our realm,
whereas ethical theories do not; they pertain only within our earthly realm to
personal and interpersonal conduct. Put another way, only God is wholly other,
even as God is immanent in Creation; that which is in the created realm does
not exhaust God. Otherwise, God could simply be a creation of human
understanding, using stuff of this world such as ethical theories to furnish
the content of that which is held to be divine.
I contend that religion, or
faith, and ethics are two distinct domains even they obviously can influence
each other. I am not contending that people of religious faith should treat
other people unethically or engage in vices. The story of Abraham sacrificing
Isaac can be read as the claim that faith in (or, more crudely, obedience to) a
divine decree (or revelation, moreover) is not subject or confined to human
morality. The divine decree that Abraham sacrifice his only son even
though Yahweh has also promised the old man that his seed would populate the
land is known only to him, whereas the ethical principle that killing someone
is murder is universally accessible to anyone’s knowledge. The Ten Commandments
have yet to arrive in the story, so there is no tension within faith between
the immorality of murder—Thou shalt not kill—and Abraham’s sacrifice;
the tension there is that Yahweh both demands that Abraham sacrifice his only
son and promises that Abraham’s descendants will multiply throughout the land.
Even in its internal tension, which Yahweh of course resolves in calling off
the sacrifice at the last minute, faith is quite another thing than morality,
and can even legitimately violate its strictures. The legitimacy if
faith as a domain (and a human phenomenon) is not based on an ethical theory or
principle; nor, for that matter, is the legitimacy of an ethical theory
necessarily based on faith. Even if faith is a factor, something more—something
native to ethics—is necessary. The assumption that it is wrong that the
innocent suffer is ethical in nature. The qualitatively different assumption
that Abraham holds that it is really Yahweh that is commanding the sacrifice is
distinctly theological in nature. Only the latter assumption is based on a
metaphysic that includes a transcendent (and immanent) deity. Even if the
innocent should not be harmed because there exists a transcendent deity, the
latter can legitimately nullify this ethical claim, as is the case with
Abraham.
When the content of a divine decree
is moral, as is the case for half of the Ten Commandments, and in the case of
Jesus’ preaching on neighbor-love as compassion towards others (even and
especially assholes), the two domains dovetail. This does not mean that the
content of faith is exhausted or sourced in ethical conduct; rather, the latter
can manifest from faith. Intense, repeated prayer or meditation that transcends
the world, for example, may, upon return to daily existence in the world, cause
a person to have an enhanced sensitivity in terms of empirical senses and thus
to other people, which in turn may trigger compassion, and the resulting
conduct may be termed ethical in nature, but the prayer or meditation oriented
metaphysically is not itself in the ethical domain and is thus not justified by
ethical principles or theory.
Is it true that a person doesn’t
have to be moral to believe in God, by which I mean that of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam? Whether or not a person unjustifiably harms another
person is separate from whether a person has a cognitive belief that an
intelligent being exists not only within, but also outside of Creation. Where
the substance of that being is believed to be love, including in neighbor-love
as expressed in compassionate acts towards other people, and here I have
Christianity in mind, then it is contradictory to not believe in such acts
while believing in God; failing to do such acts, or doing the opposite, can
occur even if the person believes in neighbor-love; this does not involve two
beliefs in contradiction. So a Christian cannot hold both that one’s enemies
should not in principle be treated with compassion, but rather, with vengeance,
and believe in the Christian conception of God. Such a belief, and the related
faith in being saved, is for naught, Paul wrote, if there is not love. To be
sure, it is possible to hold that enemies should not be loved and still believe
that an intelligent being exists outside of Creation, as the first claim
involves moral conduct (as well as love) whereas the second claim is
metaphysical (or metaphysical-experiential). Looked at from this standpoint,
the moral and theological domains can be seen to be very different, and thus
distinct, indeed.
To sum up the argument thus far, even
in cases in which the content of a divine decree has ethical meaning or
significance, the deity itself transcends the ethical domain because the
latter, being that it concerns conduct, is only in our realm (i.e., no
transcendent extension). Put another way, the divine reaching into the human
domain does not limit the divine to be within the limits of human cognition,
perception, and emotion.[1]
The Creator extends beyond its Creation.
To claim that spirituality (or religious
development) is simply a more advanced or higher level of moral development is
thus a flawed assertion that conflates two distinct domains. Faith, which can
include a metaphysical belief (i.e., that God exists), is not a “super” moral
principle, as if religion were the cherry atop an ethical sundae. To put both theology
and ethics as intervals on a linear line as if one were a development from or
of the other is to conflate two different types of things. This is precisely
the error that Ken Wilber commits in his desire to come up with a theory of
everything. To understand why, it is necessary to briefly discuss Kohlberg’s
theory of moral development because Wilber bases his own theory of stages of
consciousness in transpersonal psychology on that theory.
On a macro level of
generalization, I contend that psychology, ethics, and religion or spirituality
are different and distinct domains,
even though they often interrelate. Wilber, however, treats them almost as
synonymous, or at least as de facto species of the same domain. He thus
jumps between them in terms of stages of development, such that developing in
one domain is necessary before a stage of development in another domain can be
reached. His focus is on the incremental nature of growth. He writes, “We don’t
go from an acorn to a forest in a quantum leap. There are stages in all growth,
including human.”[2]
That a given growth is of just one thing, such as moral development, while
growth in something else is another growth, is missing from his theory as he
conflates growths in different things together.
In his theory of moral
development, Lawrence Kohlberg posts six stages, grouped into three levels:
preconventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Individual rights and
principles of conscience characterize the highest level of moral development. Wilber
situates Abraham Maslow’s notion of self-actualization at this level even
though self-actualization is in the domain of ethics. Wilber does not provide
an explanation for how the ethical contents of individual rights and
conscience necessarily correspond with self-actualized people. Doing so is
necessary because ethical principles and psychology are two different academic
disciplines and domains. Even if the sentiment of disapprobation is ethical
judgment itself, as Hume contends, it is not the psychology itself, but what it
points to in the ethical domain (e.g., a cognition that something wrong
happened from seeing someone lying on the sidewalk stabbed in the back). Applying
Hume’s notion of the naturalistic fallacy, an emotion itself merely is,
and is thus not an ought. One must make moves to the ethical domain in
terms of ethical justification before one can make an ought statement.
Wilber merely states that self-actualization is at Kohlberg’s highest stage of
moral development, as if the description of psychological self-actualization
implied an ought.
Wilber also joins Kohlberg in
positing a spiritual stage on top of the moral stages, defying the contention
that spirituality (or religion) is distinct from psychology and morality. Kohlberg
suggests that a higher level, called universal spiritual, is above his sixth
moral stage. For both Kohlberg and Wilber, a person must develop morally through
the successive moral stages before being able to reach a state of sustained
spirituality rather than just occasionally having peak experiences. According
to Wilber, the “genuinely spiritual or transpersonal stages of development
(Kohlberg’s stage 7 and beyond) depend on their development upon all of the
previous developments in stages 6, 5, 4, 3, and so on. Each of those stages
contributes something absolutely essential for the manifestation of stage 7.”[3]
But I submit that a spiritual experience, unlike psychological and moral ones,
is capable of the sort of “intense interior illumination” that Wilber claims
“can profoundly change a person’s life and open [a person] to new worlds, new
dimensions, new modes of awareness.”[4]
Such paradigmatic perceptual changes may be accompanied by psychological
emotions but to reduce the former to the latter ignores the non-emotional
aspects of being oriented to a reference point that transcends the limits of
human cognition, perception, and emotion. Also, having such an
orientation in an experience is not in itself moral or immoral; rather, both
are transcended as they pertain to our realm, which is within our limits.
Furthermore, there are several specific
problems with the claim that a person must pass through stages of moral
development before universal spirituality (as distinct from psychological peak
experiences, which Wilber conflates with episodic spirituality) can take hold.
Firstly, Maslow’s claim that lower physiological needs must be satisfied before
a person can self-actualize has been nullified by empirical studies. Someone
who is hungry or homeless can attend to the higher need for self-actualization.
While this does not necessarily mean that a person can be both at a high and
low stage of moral development, as morality is another domain, that the “all
lower stages must first be reached” assumption has been invalidated in one
domain suggests that it may be invalid in other domains, pending
research in those domains. Even if spirituality sits on top of moral
development, the stages of the latter may not have to be reached in order to be
a spiritual person.
Wilber does not say that all
moral stages must be reached before a person can have a temporary spiritual experience.
In fact, he claims that a spiritual experience can cause a person to shift
one’s moral basis from the approval of other people to law and order. He
contends that “a person at moral stage 3 who has a profound spiritual
experience might be motivated to move to the next stage—in this case, to stage
4. They do not, under any circumstances, go from stage 3 to stage 7,” which is
the spiritual stage.[5] It
does not follow, however, that yearning for a transcendent dimension in
meditation or for union with God (i.e., having a transcendent experience) in
prayer would necessarily make a person feel the need to obey local laws, for
example, because doing so is ethical or results in ethical conduct. Also, why
can’t a person whose moral campus is set to obeying laws be a spiritual person?
Obeying laws is salient in Judaism, for example. Half of the Decalogue is
divine laws that have moral content yet the point is to obey God to demonstrate
fidelity rather than to behave morally.
Therefore, a spiritual person can
have a law-obeying orientation to morality and still not reduce religion to
morality. If faith and morality are two distinct (albeit interrelated) domains,
then it does not follow that only people who are highly developed morally can
have a religious faith or sustained experience. Tapping into universal
spirituality in terms of access to another dimension—one that is
transcendent—or having an expanded awareness (also with a transcendent aspect),
which is how Wilber describes the spiritual stage, need not depend on a person’s
recognition of individual rights and principles of conscience.
I am not suggesting that people
of faith should behave unethically, or that they should get a pass for doing
so. Rather, I am challenging the claim that spirituality is simply a
higher-order level of development on top of moral stages. Were this the case,
then the content of spirituality could simply be the purest expression of
someone’s ethical ideal, which, although of great value, is still a human artifact,
or construction. That which has a transcendent “beyondness” (i.e., going beyond
our realm, and thus being inherently beyond our reaches) cannot by definition
be limited to anything that is within our realm. In Christian terms, this
notion has been argued by pointing out that God’s divine power, or omnipotence,
being unlimited or full, cannot be constrained or limited by an ethical theory
devised by us, for God goes beyond our earthly realm and thus cannot possibly
be constrained or limited by it or anything within it. That a divine command
can have ethical content, such as Thou shalt not kill, is not to say
that God is limited by a human ethic, for the ethical content comes from God in
revelation. When we add to such ethical conduct our own ethical principles and
theories, it would be impious to assume that God is thereby constrained.
It follows that a person may be
spiritual and behave ethically to avoid punishment or for approval from other
people; Kohlberg’s highest moral level of development need not be
reached. To be spiritual often issues out in ethical, compassionate treatment
of other people (and even salient beings, as in Jainism), and this is of course
a good thing. People who hurt other people for religious reasons are
justifiably condemned, and this is possible because people with
normally-functioning brains have access to the ethical dimension of human
existence. Divine decrees, and faith, moreover, go beyond such existence to
reach its source, or very condition. Being oriented to it is not of ethical
content unless a divine decree is itself ethical (i.e., a command how to treat
other people). Even then, yearning for union with God in an experience of
transcendence cannot be exhausted in one’s conduct in this world because
transcendent experience goes beyond the limits of human thought, perception,
and feelings. Put another way, if union sought with the divine transcends the
self, then how the self behaves in the world cannot possibility reach far
enough to match the inner experience. This is not to say that faith and
experience that is transcendent cannot naturally issue out in compassionate
conduct, but such faith is not a “super” kind of conduct.
Therefore, Ken Wilber is
incorrect in A Brief History of Everything in claiming that the
“genuinely spiritual or transpersonal stages of development (Kohlberg’s stage 7
and beyond) depend for their development upon all of the previous developments,”
or stages of moral development.[6]
The term spiritual is not synonymous with transpersonal, as if spirituality
were inconsistent with the human ideology of individual and consistent with
collectivism. Confining the transcendently-sourced by a human ideology is to
place a higher good below a lower one, which Aristotle calls misordered
concupiscence. Subjecting spirituality, for faith that has a transcendent
aspect, to an ethical theory or principle is better than placing an ideology in
the driver’s seat, but the underlying problem is the same: placing a lower
above a higher, or a smaller above a larger. The distinction between human
ideology and an ethical principle is not as clear as we might suppose, and may
even be in part illusionary, as ideological agendas can be adept at clothing
themselves in ethical ideals. Wilber’s spiritual cherry atop of Kohlberg’s
stages of moral development is anti-individualist, yet union with God need not
exclude the individual soul as such. Selfishness and greed are indeed sordid,
and they often exclude ethical conduct, but this does not mean that
spirituality is therefore transpersonal in the sense that it is necessary first
for a soul to transcend or even lose itself. In short, the temptation that
comes with placing spirituality atop morality may be to furnish the content
from one’s own ideology. So even though we should expect spiritual people to
behave ethically, the religious and ethical domains are distinct, and thus have
their own respective foundations and criteria. Furthermore, neither should be
reduced to psychology, for that domain does not include the logical justification
of ethical positions (and principles) and transcendence beyond the limits of not
only human conception and perception, but also emotion. In Wilber’s
terms, spirituality as awareness of another dimension or reality is not
in itself a psychological state.
1. I
am drawing here on the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius.
2. Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (Boston: Shambhala, 1996), p.
151.
3. Ibid.,
p. 150.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
