On the Integrity of Life
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and the scope of value (integrity of life), theological humanism places strong limits on human power to intervene and change life. Yet it also opens an appropriate arena and specifies the conditions in which there can be the In terms of duties (respect and enhance), the object of moral consideration
responsible use of technological power. This is to grant, as James Gustafson has put it, that “there is no clear overriding ously orders the priorities of nature and human participation in it so that one has a perfect moral justification for all human interventions.”telos, or end, which unambigu- (^16) The
burden and joy of responsibility remains the human calling. Difficult and often tragic choices must be made about specific decisions and policies in the treatment of human and non-human life. The moral calling is given specificity and orientation in terms of the imperative of responsibility. That
is the case, again, because the imperative provides guidance on how to order obligations (respect; enhance), clarity about the object of consideration (the integrity of a form of life), and also the scope of consideration and the source of value.
Insofar as human beings are creatures who must decide how to live with respect to some idea of what is good and some standards about what is right, then the “imperative of responsibility” must somehow resonate in experi-The Claim of Conscience
ence. That resonance is not just in terms of the various feelings we isolated above, the feelings of pleasure/pain, recognition/shame, guilt/innocence, participation/alienation and their social analogues. More deeply, the reso-nance of the imperative of responsibility is denoted by the idea of con-
science. And herein lies the deepest paradox of human existence. The claim of conscience signifies that the integrity of one’s own life cannot be directly aimed at or achieved. Spiritual and moral integrity, the rectitude of con-science, arises in and through a life dedicated to respecting and enhancing
the integrity of life in, with, and for others. We gain ourselves most pro-foundly in lives so dedicated.kind of faculty of the soul. Conscience is a concept for the totality of a Conscience is, then, not some specific thing in the human brain or some
human life involved in its moral and spiritual struggle; it is a name for the primary mode of being human as an agent in the world. Conscience is a way to speak about the meaning and purpose of being human with respect to the demand to orient life responsibly amid its goods, vulnerabilities, threats, and
distortions. When conscience is distorted or mistaken, human life is distorted or mistaken. One should never act against conscience, as moralists throughout