Truth and Morality: The Role of Truth in Public Life, (Ser. IVA Vol. 37)

At the beginning of the 20th century, Henry Bergson affirmed that
man cannot escape his crises without spiritual development. These words of
the French philosopher remain valid.
Indeed, the need for improvement in the quality, being, values and
models of life is felt all over the world. This seems most pronounced in
Europe, especially in the countries once ruled by totalitarian communist
regimes. In this geo-political area, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there
has been a great desire for improvement at the social and individual level,
but the change has been long delayed. Among other things, this is due to the
fact that while good is closely related to truth, the search for truth has not
been rigorously undertaken. Public life is not suffused with a sense that life
is grounded in truth. Rather there is passive acceptance of the rupture
between personal truth and public morality, between the individual
conscience and laws which are correct only in political terms. Moreover,
moral conscience, long buried by cultural factors and deformed by
historical and reductive conceptions, remains a matter almost too delicate
for discussion.
Hence, this work looks deeply into the religious and philosophical
cultural traditions in search of a more adequate grasp of truth, its role in
private and public life and its relation to social minorities and majorities,
the features of a healthy sense of life in this world, the relations between
law and morality and between Church and the lay state, and the role of
education. It analyzes the different ways of understanding truth and the
forms of morality it generates: from the individual and subjective, unrelated
to public life, to a more dynamic, objective, responsible, mature and
personalized manner.
The work is divided into three parts. The first is focused upon truth.
This recognizes the multiple horizons of truth and its search despite the
temptation of the lie. It relates truth to value and rights and conceives it
dynamically as a spiritual journey. In this light it reports on an intensive
discussion of the relation of faith and reason.
Part II extends the horizon of truth to morality, theology and
science. For the richness of the present pluralistic context and its challenge
to objectivity, it explores human life as situated between good and evil,
heaven and earth, betrayal and heroism, even in terms of environmental
ethics.
Finally Part III opens the horizons of truth still further to public
life. This studies the shape of the New Europe and the contribution of the
Orthodox and Catholic in shaping the political order by a morality based on
truth.
All this is the burden of the present volume.