Jon R. Jordan > Quotes > Quote > Jon shared it
“Whatever humans are, we are a different sort of being than pure animals. As Mortimer Adler, teacher and student of the Great Texts, wrote, “The ultimate questions which man asks about himself are partly answered by the very fact of their being asked.” Dolphins and apes do not have volumes of literature from cultures all around the globe spanning millennia in which they ask what it means to be an animal. Humans do. The ability to reason and the desire to question moral decisions is built into human nature.
Our actions have moral consequences—good or bad—for ourselves and for other beings. A tree does not consciously fall on a house, and thus, it is not a morally bad tree if it does. But we would be very quick to call a man bad if he consciously destroyed a neighbor’s home against the will of that neighbor.
Blaise Pascal said that “man must not think that he is on a level either with the brutes or with the angels, nor must he be ignorant of both sides of his nature; but he must know both.” We are not mere animals, and we are not pure disembodied spirits. We are more than what we are made of physically, but—unlike angels—we are also bound to the physical world. We live as embodied souls capable of reasoning and acting in this physical world. Our ideas and our actions have moral consequences, big and small, for ourselves and for others.
Humans are, in other words, moral beings. What we think and do, over the course of a lifetime and in small, everyday moments, matters a great deal. The smallest of words or actions can wound or heal those around you. This is part of the weight we bear as human beings.”
― Rhythms of Habit: Cultivating Virtue Through Christian Time
Our actions have moral consequences—good or bad—for ourselves and for other beings. A tree does not consciously fall on a house, and thus, it is not a morally bad tree if it does. But we would be very quick to call a man bad if he consciously destroyed a neighbor’s home against the will of that neighbor.
Blaise Pascal said that “man must not think that he is on a level either with the brutes or with the angels, nor must he be ignorant of both sides of his nature; but he must know both.” We are not mere animals, and we are not pure disembodied spirits. We are more than what we are made of physically, but—unlike angels—we are also bound to the physical world. We live as embodied souls capable of reasoning and acting in this physical world. Our ideas and our actions have moral consequences, big and small, for ourselves and for others.
Humans are, in other words, moral beings. What we think and do, over the course of a lifetime and in small, everyday moments, matters a great deal. The smallest of words or actions can wound or heal those around you. This is part of the weight we bear as human beings.”
― Rhythms of Habit: Cultivating Virtue Through Christian Time
No comments have been added yet.