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Michael Taylor: "Dio invisibile si rende visibile attraverso la sua creazione".

Professor Michael Taylor was one of the winners of the 5th edition of the 'Open Reason' awards at a conference of the Francisco de Vitoria University, part of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI Vatican Foundation. "Difendere la natura è difendere la dignità dell'essere umano", says Taylor, who quotes St. Paul: "L'invisibile di Dio diventa visibile attraverso la creazione del mondo".

Francisco Otamendi-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 9 minutes
Michael Taylor

Testo originale del articolo in inglese qui

Michael Taylor

L' Francisco de Vitoria University and the Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI, on the occasion of the IV and V editions of the fifth congress of Open Reason, in which university professors and researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain have discussed 'Man in contemporary science', as a final event a few days ago, have received the relevant awards.

The aim of the congress was to deepen our understanding of the issues related to a reality that challenges science on the path of respect and service to man and the world. The objective was to promote the dialogue of researchers and university professors with philosophy and theology starting from their own scientific knowledge, as the rector of the Francisco de Vitoria University, Daniel Sada, made clear at the award ceremony.

For one of those coincidences that are a part of life, the event is taking place on the seventh anniversary of Pope Francis' Encyclical on the care of creation, in the middle of the Laudato Si' Week 2022, which is taking place from May 22 to 29.

Throughout the five editions of the awards, the Open Reason Institute, under the direction of the vice-rector Ms. Maria Lacalle, has received works from all over the world and university professors, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have participated.
Among the winners of the first editions we find professors from Oxford University, Australe University, and many others: Notre Dame, Navarra, Siviglia, La Sabana, Loyola Chicago, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, etc.

Michael Taylor, of the Edith Stein Institute of Philosophy and the International Laudato Si Institute, is one of the award winners of this edition.
Taylor is also Visiting Professor at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH, and is a graduate in philosophy, bioethics, biology and environmental studies.
Una delle sue opere più note è 'The Foundations of Nature: Metaphysics of Gift for an Integral Ecological Ethic' (Fondamenti della natura: metafisica del dono per un'etica ecologica integrale)" della quale abbiamo parlato nella conversazione.

Professor, can you comment on any of the ideas you expressed during the conference? Specifically, during the development of the round table on the wonder of the world.

- We have begun to talk about wonder and reality, about the importance that the stupor has to help the understanding of reality with the reason itself, and their relationship, that is, in the realization that reality surpasses us.
Learning the experience of the wonder and the deepening of this aspect helps us to be intellectually humble. Intellectual humility does not consist in thinking that we cannot grasp the mystery, and therefore we keep the intellectual attitude of knowing that we do not understand and that we are in a situation of ignorance; but rather, according to St. Thomas, intellectual intelligence means to be confident of being able to understand reality, to be confident in our senses, to be confident of being able to know the truth, but at the same time to know that we cannot know it in an exhaustive way.

This is the great error of the scientific mentality that accompanies modernity. We think that if we cannot grasp anything at all, it is not real, or if reason cannot grasp it, it is not real; this is the intellectual pride that does not want to accept the limits of reason.

When we talk about the limits of reason, if there is a limit, it means that there is something beyond it; therefore, considering that reality, we must adapt our research, our search for knowledge,
There are things that we can know with a certain certainty, empirically, and others that we can know with reason, but not scientifically; philosophy and human reason help us in this.

There are also things that we can only know through relegation. For these we apply reason through theology. This has been a great point, as when the wonder has brought us to the whole panorama of being able to obtain the protection of human reason, which today is much abused. For the rest, as Plato says, the stupor is the beginning of philosophy. He was right. It is also one of the first experiences of children, and Christ tells us that we must become like children. We cannot do less than appreciate it.

In what consists the metaphysics of the gift of which she has written, and which she has exposed to the congress?

- The metaphysics of the gift is not my invention, but follows the whole Catholic, Aristotelian, Thomistic tradition, and develops with St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, because not even Tommaso has said everything.
But it develops from his ideas, which are very clear.
As for the metaphysics of the gift, we must first understand that every person who lives in the world and makes decisions about his life shows that he is applying his own metaphysics, that is, simply his own conception of reality.
On the other hand, one thing that the modern world likes to do is to deny metaphysics, because metaphysics deals with the immaterial. However, because the modern world is materialistic, it does not want to talk, and says that metaphysics does not exist. And that is why metaphysics is not studied.

Even this is metaphysics. In itself very negative, but it gives an idea of how things are, it is a reality. In our days there is a lot of blindness.
The metaphysics of the gift is what we call it, and I am not the first one to do it. A gift is about gratitude, about humility, about experience, about knowing that we are not self-sufficient, about being open to what comes to us from the outside. And this is very important, because it spurs us to look for the one who offers it, that is the donor, who in the last analysis is God. Therefore, even non-believers can access these ideas only by following reason and philosophy, and decide whether to believe or not.

He says that a gift appreciates the gratitude, the humility, and it spurs us to look for the donor, and he has made reference to the gift of existence.

- The gift, in the metaphysics of St. Thomas, also refers to the gift of existence, and this was his great contribution to ancient philosophy and metaphysics, because neither Aristotle nor Plato had a very clear concept of the concept of being.

 For both things were eternal, the forms were eternal, the essence was carried within the form. But what St. Thomas shows is that the form, which acts on matter, is also passive with respect to the gift of existence, to the act of being. This act of being is what keeps everything in existence, it is the gift of God, that is, creation.

Creation is not something that has arrived in a distant past, but it is still arriving. It discovers a relationship for all things and for all of us, who are not the source of our own existence.
E solo in Dio che l'essenza corrisponde con l'esistenza. 

God is his own existence, which is eternal. And in this sense we philosophers do not say that God exists, but that he is. God is his own existence, while all creation exists thanks to him.

The metaphysics of the gift starts from this idea, but it is also seen in all things, because every effect shows the signs and characteristics of its cause. In the whole creation touches all the goodness, beauty and reasonableness of the source, which is God, and also his relational essence; and here I refer to the Trinitarian ontology, three Persons in one. 

It is seen in ecology, in the food chain (nutrition network), in the way in which all things are correlated, in the way in which animals and plants are decomposed to create the next generation.
And like all these things, they appeal to us as truth, as good and beautiful.

Another important point: in the typical scientific way, things do not appear as truth, good and beautiful, in the deep sense, in the catholic sense, but science renders everything neutral; that which is false, because everything that is created is good for existence, even a sledgehammer, and this is a metaphysical principle. This is something we must recover.

The natural world is not a machine. It is not possible to simply change the parts, nature must be treated in a different way.

Michael Taylor

It also proposes an ecological ethic, against a dominant vision of the natural world based on a mechanical vision... Is it correct?

- Just like that. The modern world is based on scientism, which is something different from science, that is, from the search for truth with the empirical method. If you solve this method, you end up in scientism, you end up interpreting all of nature as if it were a machine. And this is very simple to do, very natural, and analogies can help us. But the metaphysics of the modern world is made like this, it treats nature as if it were a machine.

Modern science is a method that serves to teach how to manipulate things, and so it is that sometimes we treat nature, ignoring its telos; we ignore the dignity, the same end that God gives in its essence, in the sense that everything exists because it is receiving from God the gift of existence, and this should at least make us think.
I am not saying that it is wrong to eat the meat of an animal, but we must at least show gratitude and understand that for us it is a gift. God wanted us to live, but he also wanted us to help us to move forward in our lives.

Sometimes ecological ethics treats things in this way. Well, if you intend to pollute one area, it means that you must clean up or preserve another, and that's enough.
I was surprised to see that today it is said that the airlines do not produce carbon dioxide, because they pay a fee to balance the equation. It does not work like that. The natural world is not a machine and it is not possible to simply change the pieces. Nature must be treated differently.

He also speaks of deferring the dignity of nature which, if we have not understood correctly, is to defer the dignity of the human being.

- Here is how things stand. From metaphysics it is understood that everything that has been created has its own dignity, according to its essence. A body is not the same as a child, but both are good, insofar as they exist, and they are all loved by God.
Many times I realize that, in the current situation, animalists, for example, want to think of animals as human beings and claim that we should not mistreat them. But at the same time they are aborted. Let's see, do they all have the same dignity or not? Or how do things stand? I think that the defense of life, the defense of the dignity of the person, is absolutely essential, and that we should not oppose that the dignity of nature and animals is defended.

It is very interesting to understand that, when in Poland they fought against Marxism, they said that there is no need for a nemesis to affirm the value of the person and the values of the Vangelo. While Marxism does, Marxism had no need. It had to attack a target to justify its existence and its lot.

The same applies to the defense of the dignity of human beings. This is well seen in the writings of Pope John Paul II. Chronologically, he has spoken a lot about the dignity of the human being. He was in fact one of the main founders of personalism, which fought against Marxism. But two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on January 1, 1990, he began to speak of the dignity of the created. What he acclaims is that the dignity of the human being is based on the dignity of the created, we are creature. In this sense I speak of defending the dignity of nature, laying the foundations for defending the dignity of the human being.

You saw his arguments, we speak a little of the encyclical Laudato sï, by Pope Francis. How would he reassumed a few contributions of this encyclical, now that seven years have passed since its promulgation? 

- The vision of which I am speaking is also present in the Laudato Si'. There are those who want to manipulate the document, to say that it is only about climate change, or to be activists, politicians.
No. The vision of this encyclical is very deep, it covers the vision of what it means to be created and that of creation itself. The first attitude is not that of going on the road to protest. The first attitude is to stop, to be silent and to contemplate nature, to contemplate the beauty of the created and above all the creation of ourselves.
We are the culmination of creation, which does not mean, however, that we can do what we want, but this gives us a great responsibility. This is the vision that underlies the encyclical Laudato si'.

The next step?

- Now, when we are in an attitude of prayer, open to understand the gift of creation through contemplation, we can adopt the virtue of prudence, which helps us to make concrete decisions to live our daily lives.

Obviously, living a simpler life, which requires fewer resources, is the obvious conclusion. We live in a technocratic world and we are constantly invited to think that happiness is found in having many things, in doing many things, in traveling to many places.
But the richness of the creation that Laudato discovers is that all that we need, all that the human heart desires, goodness, truth, beauty, can be found, and found better in a simple life that pays attention to the essential in creation. To those who do not care so much about what we have or can have, to those who live close to the earth.
It is very dehumanizing not to know where our food comes from, to have to eat things always packaged in plastic, not to see a tree or a tree in its natural place.

But this is very difficult for many people. There is also a rivalry between work and agriculture, not a mechanical, modern agriculture that uses chemical products for everything, but a simpler, a little bit more popular agriculture.
I believe that the world realizes that this village life, in contact with nature, has an intrinsic value that helps us to live better, to understand our faith better. What Paul says in the letter to the Romans 1, 20 is that the invisible God becomes visible through his creation. There we can grasp God.
If we live in a world completely manipulated by man, it is difficult to see God. I think it is necessary to be all conscientious.

We are the culmination of creation. Which does not mean that we can do what we want, but this fact gives us a great responsibility. And this is the vision that is based on the encyclical Laudato si'.
Michael Taylor

This concludes this suggestive conversation with Professor Michael Taylor, which will be continued next.
Pierluca Azzaro, Secretary General of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, also spoke at the award ceremony, recalling that "this collaboration began six years ago, after the conclusion of the Congress 'The prayer, a force that changes the world' that the Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI Foundation held at the UFV in the context of the celebration of the V Centenary of the birth of St. Teresa".

Omnes has had as rapporteurs in 2021 two professors who have received the annual prizes awarded in Rome by the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation: the Australian Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger Prize 2020, and the Tedesco Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Ratzinger Prize 2021.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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