Preliminary Notes on Integrity
Now that I have discussed at some length rule utilitarianism (see the sidebar), we can turn to the next half of ethics. Integrity will be our third ethical system, individual unlike the NT Rational and SJ Guardian social approaches to ethics, corresponding to the NF Idealist temperament and to the cardinal virtue of justice.
Our starting point will be the nature of NF love. Unlike NT’s disinterested benevolence, NF love is deeply personal love of a particular human being as unique as he is and for his own sake. (One might ask, what are the SJ and SP loves? The correct reply, it seems to me, is that for the introspective types love is primarily an emotion, while for the sensing types love is primarily an action. What kind of action will be discussed later, so stay tuned.) NTs respect one’s autonomy and care for the welfare of the whole society; NFs respect one’s benevolence or love that stitches together into a unity yet care for the welfare of the individual as unique and irreplaceable. NT ethics teaches truth to each individual and thereby serves society (e.g., by promoting coordination of plans); NF ethics unifies society and therefore serves each individual. Due to its stress on personal uniqueness, integrity allows no interpersonal utility comparisons; each person is precious in his own right. Its is the morality of the good shepherd (Jn 10; Mt 18:12-14): “He calls his own sheep by name,” implying that each sheep is special. With NFs there is no weighing one person’s welfare against another; people are fundamentally incommensurable, each one being an inimitable world in itself.
NTs can start with a unified society (e.g., by the price system) and move down until they reach a society consisting of a single individual to whom they recommend to practice his own personal prudence. NFs might want to start with an individual and his unarguable personal identity and proceed upward through, say, a family into a civil society attempting to attribute some sort of identity to such composite objects. (Mises who called the market a process and Whitehead who focused on the process “philosophy of organism” and process theology would, I imagine, disagree that any such identity of trans-human entities exists. And yet…) For example, in theology we talk about the body of Christ, of which Jesus is the head and we are members. Perhaps this society of the faithful and the saints has a kind of cosmic mind to it, namely the mind of God, into which we are incorporated, by which we are influenced, and of whose blessings we partake.
Just as telling the truth is the key to utilitarianism, unifying into a “one,” into something with an identity is the key to integrity. But unifying what? For example, an NF might recommend a union of human ends. One’s goals should not contradict each other but form a coherent life’s work or even story, again with a kind of identity. Or, being true to oneself, given that there are traces of the divine Trinity within all of us, entails a kind of conformity of the “son” to the “father” which, when translated, means a unity of essence, self-knowledge, and self-love which forms a person. (As I write here, the relationship between the divine persons is called paternity and filiation, because “God’s knowledge is both true and is ‘true to His essence’ as in, conforms to it, never falters from reality, never errs, never sins.”) The virtue of justice — called by Aquinas “metaphorical” but in fact precisely the genuine one — justifies a man to himself or rectifies his dealings with himself.
Far be it from integrity to deny that each individual has his own personal projects and priorities that require his special attention. Utilitarianism, on the contrary, would have none of that. A utilitarian does not respect persons or privilege anybody’s plans and undertakings including those of the utilitarian himself. But integrity realizes that what makes each person special and unique is precisely his own ideas and actions. (Note that I do not say “virtues” or “personality,” because, as I have explained, each member of <powers, virtues, acts/happiness> follows upon the previous one, and we are dealing with the ethics of acts and of how to be happy, not with its precondition, the virtues. Virtue ethics is its own separate subject.) Each person has not only the right but the duty to devote his efforts first and foremost to his own affairs. This follows immediately from the nature of NF love. With its being deeply personal, one naturally loves himself more than any neighbor, no matter how close. The difference is even of a kind not merely of degree: I bear a peculiar kind of responsibility for myself that I do not bear for anyone else. I am assuredly my own keeper even if not necessarily my brother’s. But nothing stops an integrist from loving certain people more than others; in fact, he is almost required to do so. Charity means “holding dear” and those dear to one’s heart are bound to be special and the love for them, exclusive. One can love everybody in the world with the love of charity only if one is God. Hence we have the principle of subsidiary which presupposes differing degrees not only of knowledge but of love, as well.