Digital Edition
Just feelings
Oct
True justice requires being true to your emotions
Our faith calls us to include our whole being in our moral and spiritual lives.
Prior to my work in the peace and justice arena, I focused much of my academic attention on moral psychology, which attends to the emotional and psychological aspects of the moral life. Although these concepts still inform my own pursuit of justice, the opportunities for expounding on them in public discourse are rare. However, I am convinced that the divisive animosity that permeates political engagement is due, in part, to a lack of attention to our affective lives in moral analysis. Now is as good a time as any to make that case.
We often think of emotions as passive events that simply happen to us and for which we cannot be held accountable—indeed, the root of the word passion is the Latin pati-, to suffer or endure. When we take this view, we can excuse ourselves for experiencing undignified emotions as long as our words and actions align with moral law. For example, I can feel smugly satisfied when harm befalls my political opponents, provided I did not actively try to harm them.
Our faith, however, calls us to include our whole being in our moral and spiritual lives. Indeed, the heart of Christian morality is the commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30–31). These maxims demand that we engage our whole selves—including our emotions—in the pursuit of virtue.
I cannot expect my work for justice to be productive unless my emotions register the dignity of every human person, each made in the image of God. This is because emotions motivate actions and are indicative of values. Disordered values will sabotage any efforts toward justice by motivating actions that stem from pride and tend toward domination, rather than toward building authentic community.
St. Augustine used the concept of the ordo amoris—the order of love—to make this point, claiming that virtue is “nothing else than perfect love of God,” or rightly ordered love.