"Those who accept the world as it is would be dead." Dorothee Sölle: the truth is concrete.
Ceres, the Roman goddess, suddenly appears among the bloodstained savages, takes the spear from the hand of a wild hunter and uses it to draw a furrow in the earth, into which she throws a grain from her crown of ears. Immediately, an immense cornfield grows from it, and thus the survival of mankind no longer depends on bloody combat.
"That man may become human,
Form an eternal bond
Faithfully with the pious earth,
His maternal foundation..." Friedrich Schiller
The goddess Ceres transformed the bloodstained savages into human beings who now live in mutual respect and moral self-restraint. Only in this way can people unite with their neighbors so that they can live together in harmony. This social unity gives rise to strength, both for each individual and for everyone together.
"And only through his customs can he be free and powerful." Schiller
We have been to the moon, climbed all the high mountains here on our Earth, can receive gravitational waves from the depths of space and from eternity, have named and defined everything that surrounds us, convert analog into digital, horizons dissolve and so does the here and now.
All the goddesses and gods vanished, leaving behind a pledge, or rather a gift, for us, which weighs heavily on us, a yoke for some:
Freedom
The freedom to have a sense of community, the freedom to share, the togetherness that makes us human in the first place... We didn't manage it, we weren't able to.
No more Ceres in sight!
But there's no need to despair, Ceres is no more, but Kant is approaching.
Our malice, our hubris, envy, greed, our carelessness, our egos—Kant calls them our adversities, our crudeness—they should exist, because they are our helpers on the path to humanity. Guided by moral will, as the highest good, and moral sentiment, we become civilized, decent people.
"Nature gave man reason and, based on this, freedom of will ... He, man, should not be guided by circumstances, provided with and instructed by acquired knowledge ... ... man should, once he has worked his way up from the greatest brutality to the greatest skill, inner perfection of thought and thereby to bliss, take sole credit for this ... " Immanuel Kant
Our obstacles: laziness, greed, avarice, lust for power, selfishness—we can develop all these crude traits into culture, into civility.
If we were to embrace an Arcadian shepherd's life, Kant believes, in harmony, frugality, and mutual love, talents would remain forever hidden in their buds.
People, as docile as the sheep they graze, would hardly attach any greater value to their existence than their livestock does. They would not fill the void of creation in view of their purpose as rational beings.
And Kant continues: All culture and art that adorns humankind, the most beautiful social orders, are the fruits of unsociability, which is compelled by itself to discipline itself and thus, through enforced art, to fully develop the seeds of nature.
Although it is impossible to make something completely straight out of crooked wood, i.e., what humans are made of, we are obliged to strive toward this ideal.
For Kant, the vessel in which this is to be achieved is a perfect civil constitution of the state.
Human cultural achievement—human civilization—despite all personal adversities, leads us step by step toward humanity, toward responsibility for ourselves and our neighbors, including ecological and economic responsibility.
Thomas Aquinas called it "quod bonum commune potius est bono privato" (in short: the common good takes precedence over personal well-being).
Richard Rorty believes that the only remaining principle of enlightened morality is solidarity in the sense of compassion for subjects with whom one feels a sense of belonging to a "we."
If we extend this concept of solidarity to include reliability, loyalty, friendship, charity, and brotherhood, and if we integrate into our brotherhood the possible existence and emergence of fear and competition, we come to realize that what unites us is what binds us together, while what divides us is what separates us! Once upon a time, it was said: one for all.
This gives rise to and justifies our responsibility towards our neighbors, future generations, animals, and our ecological responsibility.
The way to give responsibility weight and make it livable is through solidarity and cooperation. The tasks we face can only be accomplished through qualitative cooperation.
"If I could have one wish, I would wish for neither wealth nor power, but rather the passion of possibility. I would wish for an eye that is eternally young, eternally burning with the desire to see possibility." Søren Kierkegaard
When we look around, we have little reason to hope that it will succeed. But we have good tools, a clear mind and compassion, willpower and responsibility, and the knowledge that we are not alone—that is enough to make it possible.
If we also understand social structures as a means of curbing antisocial impulses, we are on the right track.
"I feel courage to venture into the world,
To bear the earth's sorrow, the earth's joy,
To struggle with storms around me
And not to fear the crunch of shipwreck."
Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
About the author
Werner Lampert (born 1946 in Vorarlberg/Austria) is one of the pioneers in the field of sustainable products and their development in Europe. The organic pioneer has been intensively involved in organic farming since the 1970s. With Back to the origin (Hofer) and Ja! Natürlich, he developed two of the most successful organic brands in the German-speaking world.
