Morality and religion

This article by philosopher Bertrand Vergely, a lecturer at the Institut Saint-Serge in Paris, examines the relationships between morality, religion and contemporary ethics. Adopting a philosophical and theological approach, the author begins from the observation of a fundamental contradiction in modern nihilism, which is unable to deny meaning while maintaining moral demands. Drawing on Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Sartre and Pascal, he articulates three levels of relationship to life — ethical, moral and metaphysical — to show that all authentic morality presupposes a religious foundation. Applying this reflection to bioethics, Vergely proposes a path of prudence between fatalism and technicist vertigo, structured around three principles: willing the best, preventing this desire from producing the worst, and not confusing the avoidance of the worst with the achievement of the best. The theological contribution lies in the christological grounding of this embodied ethics.