Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [119]
Most obvious is the hampering effect of our various egocentric preoccupations. A certain type of man feels, on every conceivable occasion, that his rights are threatened or trespassed upon. He always keeps on his guard lest some impairment of his rights should escape his attention. Dominated by his fear of such an injury or encroachment, he seldom stops to consider whether a thing is valuable in itself or not, whether it glorifies God or offends Him. Hence, his vision of various situations is obscured, his capacity of adequate judgment is blunted. He is incapable of a free, unwarped response to values.
In his mind, the theme of his rights overshadows the question of the objective value involved; thus, instead of a disinterested love of truth and of right he is likely to develop a bitter and cantankerous attitude. Indeed, summum jus, summa injuria, his inordinate insistence on his rights may sometimes tempt him to ride roughshod over the rights of others. Such people, in their cramped egotism, are as far removed from true freedom as it is possible to be.
In others, morbid egocentrism takes the form of over-susceptibility. Every now and then they feel slighted, offended, treated with disregard or, at any rate, unkindly. They are always on the lookout for slights inflicted upon them. Their capacity for objective judgment is also gravely impaired. An elaborate set of inhibitions prevents them from displaying an adequate response to values. They are crushed under a heavy burden; they are continually moving in a circle around their ego. They never raise themselves above a situation in which the consideration due to their person seems to be involved, and must in their turn be qualified as specifically unfree.
Disgust about unsavory things can hinder freedom
An entirely different but scarcely less important form of unfreedom is that which proceeds from the attitude of disgust. In various situations, certain people labor under grave inhibitions owing to the fact that they feel disgusted at the thought of any closer contact with others. The theme of the situation escapes them because of their preoccupation lest they should have to touch something that inspires them with disgust. They would shudder, for instance, at the idea of drinking from a glass from which someone else has drunk.
Of course we must distinguish between the different types of disgust. The disgust evoked by really and obviously unsavory things—such as dirt, purulent sores, and so on—is in itself perfectly legitimate; a complete indifference in this respect betrays a coarseness and crude lack of sensibility, which is anything but a virtue. Even this normal reaction of nausea, however, must not reach the point of hampering us in the practice of charity. It must never keep us from helping a person in need; furthermore, while tending a sick person we must so repress it so that it is unnoticeable to the patient. Certainly it is not a duty to emulate those saints who kissed the fetid sores of lepers; that was in response to a particular vocation. Yet, whenever the situation objectively requires us to undergo contact with such things—whenever, that is to say, it does become a duty of charity—we must silence the voice of disgust in us, and subordinate everything to the imperative of love. Our failure to do so proves our deficiency of inner freedom.
Disgust at naturally private things may hinder freedom
Another type of disgust refers to a too intimate bodily contact with other persons. Certain things that are not really disgusting by themselves may, as possible vehicles or symbols of such an intimate contact, become vicarious objects of disgust. Here, again, sensibility as such is by no means a defect: it is right to be aware of the fact that things of this order belong to man’s corporeal sphere of privacy, and to shrink from penetrating into that sphere.
Take, for instance, the case of conjugal love. Here the intentio unionis is a predominant theme and can legitimately unfold itself; accordingly, the bodily sphere of privacy is itself translucent with