Is this feeling really strong enough to justify an ethic as determined and inflexible, as solidly established as the ethic of those who believe in revealed morality, in the survival of the soul, in reward and punishment? I have tried to base the principles of a lay ethics on a natural reality (and, as such, in your view too, the result of a divine plan) like our corporeality and the idea that we instinctively know that we have a soul (or something that serves as such) only by virtue of the presence of others. It would appear that what I have defined as a «lay ethics» is at bottom a natural ethics, which not even believers deny. Is not the natural instinct, brought to the right level of maturity and self-awareness, a foundation offering sufficient guarantees? Of course we may think this an insufficient spur to virtue. «In any case,» nonbelievers can say, «no one will know of the evil I am secretly doing.» But those who do not believe think that no one is watching them from on high, and therefore they also know that—precisely for this reason—there is not even a Someone who may forgive. If such people know they have done ill, their solitude shall be without end, and their death desperate. They will opt, more than believers, for the purification of public confession, they will ask the forgiveness of others. This they know, in the deepest part of their being, and therefore they know that they should forgive others first. Otherwise how could we explain that remorse is a feeling known to nonbelievers too?
I should not like to establish a clear-cut opposition between those who believe in a transcendent God and those who believe in no superindividual principle. I should like to point out that it was precisely ethics that inspired the title of Spinoza’s great work, which begins with a definition of God as the cause of Himself. But Spinoza’s divinity, as we well know, is neither transcendent nor personal: yet even the vision of a great and single cosmic substance in which one day we shall be reabsorbed can reveal a vision of tolerance and benevolence precisely because we are all interested in the equilibrium and harmony of this sole substance. This is so because we tend to think it impossible for this substance not to be in some way enhanced or deformed by the things we have done over the millennia. Thus I would also dare say (this is not a metaphysical hypothesis, it is merely a timid concession to the hope that never abandons us) that even from such a standpoint we could table the problem of some kind of life after death. Today the electronic universe suggests that sequences of messages can be transferred from one physical medium to another without losing their unique characteristics, and it seems that they can exist even as pure immaterial algorithms when, one medium having been abandoned, they are not transcribed again onto another. And who knows whether death, rather than an implosion, is not an explosion and the impressing, somewhere, among the vortices of the universe, of the software (which others call «soul») we have developed in life, made up of memories and personal remorse, and therefore of incurable suffering, or of a sense of peace for duty done, and love.
But you say that, without the example and the word of Christ, all lay ethics would lack a basic justification imbued with an ineluctable power of conviction. Why deprive laypersons of the right to avail themselves of the example of a forgiving Christ? Try, Carlo Maria Martini, for the good of the discussion and of the dialogue in which you believe, to accept even if only for a moment the idea that there is no God; that man appeared in the world out of a blunder on the part of a maladroit fate, delivered not only unto his mortal condition but also condemned to be aware of this, and for this reason the most imperfect of all creatures (if I may be permitted the echoes of Leopardi in this suggestion). This man, in order to find the courage to await death, would necessarily become a religious animal, and would aspire to the construction of narratives capable of providing him with an explanation and a model, an exemplary image. And among the many stories he imagines—some dazzling, some awe-inspiring, some pathetically comforting—in the fullness of time he has at a certain point the religious, moral, and poetic strength to conceive the model of Christ, of universal love, of forgiveness for enemies, of a life sacrificed that others may be saved. If I were a traveler from a distant galaxy and I found myself confronted with a species capable of proposing this model, I would be filled with admiration for such theogonic energy, and I would judge this wretched and vile species, which has committed so many horrors, redeemed were it only for the fact that it has managed to wish and to believe that all this is the truth.
You are now free to leave the hypothesis to others: but admit that even if Christ were only the subject of a great story, the fact that this story could have been imagined and desired by humans, creatures who know only that they do not know, would be just as miraculous (miraculously mysterious) as the son of a real God’s being made flesh. This natural and worldly mystery would not cease to move and ennoble the hearts of those who do not believe.
This is why I believe that, on the fundamental points, a natural ethic—respected for the profound religiosity that inspires it—can find common ground with the principles of an ethic founded on faith in transcendence, which cannot fail to recognize that natural principles have been carved into our hearts on the basis of a plan for salvation. If this leaves, as it certainly does, margins that may not overlap, it is no different from what happens when different religions encounter one another. And in conflicts of faith, charity and prudence must prevail.
On the Press
Senators,
What I am about to put before you is a cahier de doléances on the situation of the Italian press, especially with regard to its relations with the world of politics. I can do this in the presence of representatives of the press, and not behind their backs, because I have been saying what I intend to say here since the early sixties, mostly in the pages of Italian newspapers and weeklies. This means that we are living in a country where a free and unbiased press is able to put itself on trial.
The function of the fourth estate is certainly that of keeping a check on and criticizing the other three traditional estates (together with economic power and that represented by political parties and the labor unions), but it can do this in a free country because its criticism has no repressive function. The mass media can influence the political life of the country only by creating opinion. But the traditional powers cannot control or criticize the media other than through the media itself; otherwise their intervention becomes a sanction—either executive or legislative or judiciary—which can happen only if the media commit crimes, or appear to lead to the formation of political and institutional imbalance (see the debate on the par conditio, or equal-access law). But since the media, and in our case the press, cannot be exempt from criticism, it is a condition of health for a democratic country that the press put itself on the stand.
Yet this alone is frequently not enough. Indeed, it can constitute a good excuse, or, more specifically, a case of what Marcuse called «repressive tolerance.» Once it has demonstrated its self-flagellatory impartiality, the press no longer feels any interest in reforming itself. About twenty years ago I was asked to write a long article criticizing Espresso magazine, which was published by Espresso itself. This may be excessive modesty on my part, but if Espresso subsequently took a turn for the better, it was thanks not to my article but to the natural evolution of things. As far as I recall, my criticisms made no difference.
In drawing up this cahier de doléances of mine, I do not intend to criticize the press in its relations with the world of politics as if the world of politics were an innocent victim of the abuses of the press. I maintain that politics bears full joint responsibility for the situation that I shall try to outline here.
I am not one of those provincial types for whom things go wrong only at home. Nor will I fall victim to the error of the Italian press, whose love of things foreign is such that whenever mention is made of a non-Italian daily the name of the publication is almost always preceded by the adjective «authoritative,» to the point that all foreign evening newspapers are thus described even when they are fourth-rate rags. Most of the evils that afflict the Italian press today are common in almost all countries. But I shall make negative reference to other countries only when this is strictly necessary, because «two wrongs never make a right.» And I shall take examples from other countries when it seems to me that they have a positive lesson for us.
One last specification: the texts I shall refer to are La Repubblica, the Corriere della Sera, and Espresso, and this is out of a
