A Metaphysical Critique of the Cultural Diversity Attitude

Last updated on: May 20, 2007 at 8:42 pm by voxnovablog

A Metaphysical Critique of the Cultural Diversity Attitude 2007-05-20T20:42:00-05:00 voxnovablog

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During my last years as a graduate student at Saint Louis University, the university renovated its student center in which was to be found a chapel frequented by many students, oftentimes for a quick prayer between classes or even for a moment of Eucharistic adoration. As seems to be the rage at many Catholic universities and colleges these days, the chapel was demolished and replaced instead with a new multicultural center. In effect, university’s Catholic identity was reduced to only one among many other competing social and cultural identities. The reason for this, I suspect, is the ubiquitous desire for cultural diversity.

As almost any mission statement will reveal, our social conscious has seemed to operate, at times implicitly but very often explicitly, with the following imperative: “Act in such a way that in all things and in all ways cultural diversity is promoted and nurtured at all costs.” Even our own Vox Nova would seem to have a first-class seat upon the diversity bandwagon inasmuch as it too celebrates diversity in the form of the variety of perspectives contributing to our Catholic understanding of politics, society, culture, and the like. As such, a posting on social-cultural diversity might reasonably be considered timely. In this posting I wish to challenge the idea that diversity (in all its forms) should be sought simply for diversity’s sake. Diversity after all is not an end in itself. Included in my challenge is the claim that it is particularly repugnant for the Catholic Church and all of her institutions to subordinate itself to the urge for diversity. In fact, I shall argue that seeking after diversity for diversity’s sake is not only a distasteful social practice, but it also presupposes and encourages a faulty metaphysics, one that ultimately strips reality of its intelligibility and telos. There is little surprise then that Boethius says, “All diversity is discordant, but similitude is to be desired” (De hebdomadibus, lns. 49, 50). In what follows I hope that my speculations are not too arcane. If they seem as such my only consolation will be that perhaps it is a sign of the time, for such speculation, as Jacques Maritain once commented, “requires an exercise of metaphysical insight to which the contemporary mind is hardly accustomed” (The Person and the Common Good, 11).

Two Senses of Diversity

I. Authentic Diversity

Immediately, I must qualify my position for there is a certain equivocity in the meaning of the term ‘diversity’ that I am presently exploiting. That is, as I see it, there are two senses of diversity—an authentic and an inauthentic sense—and it is only the latter that I find disagreeable. With respect to the former it must be said that there is an undeniable nobility and goodness in diversity. In fact, Scripture tells us, “God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good” (Gen. 1:31). God’s creation consists not only of many things, but, as Genesis relates, of several kinds of things: light and darkness, earth and sea, fish and birds, male and female, in short, diversity. If we are to approach such diversity from within a metaphysical perspective, two considerations immediately come to fore.

First, as Augustine continually reminds us, any creature is good simply inasmuch as it is or exists, yet, inasmuch as it is a creature, the goodness proper to it is only finite (Cf. e.g., Enchiridion, 12). Still, in its finite goodness, a creature imitates—to the degree that its nature will allow—the absolute, infinite goodness proper to God, who is Goodness itself. If God’s infinite goodness is to be more perfectly manifest, then it stands to reason that there would be not only one kind of creature but several kinds, just as the nature of pure light is more perfectly manifest not simply through the brilliance of one color but through many. In like manner, Thomas Aquinas argues, “[W]hatever is caused is finite, since only God’s essence is infinite…. The finite is rendered more perfect by the addition of other elements. Hence it was better to have diversity in created things, and thus to have good objects in greater number, than to have but a single kind of beings produced by God” (Compendium theologiae, c. 72). And likewise, “The presence of multiplicity and variety among created things was … necessary that a perfect likeness of God could be found in them according to their manner of being” (Summa contra gentiles II, c. 45).

Second, we must keep in mind that the finite goodness found in creatures, though proper to its substance, is not absolute. That is, in its very being and goodness a creature refers or stands in relation to the divine being, as an effect does to its cause. All this is simply to say that a creature is ontologically constituted in its substantiality through its very relation to God as its sustaining cause, whence Aquinas says, “Everything is … called good from the divine goodness, as from the first exemplary effective and final principle of all goodness” (Summa theologiae I, q. 6, a. 4). While all creatures might be diverse, they are united through their metaphysical relationship to God. God functions, as Thomas suggests, not only as an efficient cause of creation but as a final cause, the ultimate end of all that is, the end in virtue of which all diversity is brought to unity. One might say, then, that all diversity is for the sake of unity.

This same metaphysical situation plays itself out culturally insofar as a diverse group of people is unified but also distinguished from other groups through the end or goal of its cultic activities or behavior. With respect to Christian culture that which stands as its end is obviously God, the alpha and omega, by means of the Incarnate Word. Those practices identifying Christian cultural, i.e., its liturgical acts, spiritualities, and disciplines, are all directed toward fostering a relationship with Christ and, in Christ, with one another. If Christ is our end, then Christ cannot divide us, which is why, despite their differences in practices and disciplines, the various rites of the Catholic Church are ultimately unified through Christ. The diversity that exists within such a plurality of rites, then, is an authentic one through which Christ is made manifest and in which each practitioner is made self-consciously aware of his relation to Christ as his final end. Of course, misunderstandings of Christ’s person ultimately will inevitably affect one cultural practices and attitudes, which has resulted in the fragmenting of the Christian community, which continues to disintegrate as Christ recedes over our cultural horizon and is replaced with whatever Christ-surrogate is ready at hand. The upshot of this reasoning is that cultural diversity is only authentic when, through the cultural variation that gives rise to that diversity, a singular and ultimate end is sought, namely, Christ. To the degree that diverse cultures fall away from Christ as their end, they are less culturally authentic. Similarly, to the degree that a culture falls away from Christ as an exclusive and ultimate end it succumbs to a kind of inauthentic diversity.

II. Inauthentic Diversity

This gives rise to the second kind diversity I mentioned earlier. “Inauthentic diversity” fails or refuses to acknowledge its relation to a unified end or even the possibility of such an end at all. Furthermore, since the intelligibility of any action can only be known in relation to its end, the intelligibility of those actions constituting a cultural practice suddenly dissipate. Having lost their intelligibility, values, customs, and practices become relativized and are, as a result, immune to any kind of transcendental critique or scrutiny. In such a thin atmosphere all cultures and cultural practices become equally valid, equally good, in short equal. But, lest one misunderstand, this ‘equality’ is not one whereby each practice and culture is elevated to a sublime height, but is instead one whereby all are reduced and leveled to a kind of valueless poverty. If everything is equally valid, equally good, and equally true, then every thing is equally meaningless, equally absurd, and equally false. Seeking diversity for diversity’s sake in which there is no end beyond diversity except diversity itself, forfeits all transcendental value, to which the only kind of existential response, as Jean-Paul Sartre has shown (Cf. Nausea), is simply nausea, boredom, and despair.

The End of Diversity

If Catholicism seeks to be true to itself and its supernatural head, then it must appropriate unapologetically Christ as its true, singular, and ultimate end. To do anything less would be to adulterate itself and misunderstand the personality of Christ, who said of himself (John 14:6) that not only is he the Truth—subsistent and Incarnate Truth who sustains all other truths—not only the life, but also the way. If he is the “way,” it is only because he leads to an end, which, as he tells, is the Father, with whom he is one. And it is that unity that Christ desires for us all: “That they all may be one as we, Father, are one” (Jn 17:21)—(Cf. John Paul II, Ut unum sint: On commitment to Ecumenism).

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