VALUES
Alberoni had already expounded his philosophical conception of life and morality in his poetic work
L'albero della vita.(1982). Here he takes up the theme again and amplifies it in Valori,
where in twenty-three “reflections” he discusses the problem of evil and violence.
Religion, moral philosophy and art are based on different categories from that of science, but they
have the same dignity. Science emerges when value judgements and philosophical finalism are eliminated.
It is also founded on certain a priori assumptions, for example, in the social sciences, that
there must be a cost-benefit advantage. In this way science gives us nature, the existing.
Nature is indifferent to pain and justice. Man, on the contrary, though belonging to nature and being
unjust and violent , aspires to a world without violence and judges himself and nature in the light of
this ideal. Moral philosophy is this judging the world “from outside”.
The universe evolves. Atoms are formed from elementary
particles to become increasingly complex structures. With living beings there came pain and escape
from pain, the first refusal of the existing. Then came man, who distinguished between good and evil (
having eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and began to modify the world so as to fulfil his
dreams and values. The refusal of pain in the living, and man's dreams and values are the breath of
the divine in the universe.
The evolution of man has hardly begun. Yet today he has taken possession of the genetic code, the fruit
of the tree of life. What will he manage to become and perform in the next few million years? His task
is to carry the work of creation to fulfilment. Since science is only an instrument, he has only his
own moral sense to guide him But morality is neither the object of science nor the product of reason,
but emerges as revelation out of love.