What could Abercrombie and Fitch and the game of handball
possibly have in common? Has that carnal-minded clothing leviathan
released a spring collection to sex up a T-shirt-and-shorts kind of
pasttime? Not yet.

But they have both elicited the fighter pilot’s focus and
multi-sourced wisdom of John F. Kavanaugh–Jesuit, philosopher,
handball player and defender of a human dignity undermined by
cultural behemoths like A&F.

When I speak with Kavanaugh, we are on the top floor of Jesuit
Hall, the Jesuit residence across from St. Francis Xavier College
Church. From the massive windows–think of the viewing space at the
top of a major skyscraper–I see Grand Boulevard extend miles
south.

It hits me that this is appropriate since in 1941 Kavanaugh was
born in south St. Louis.

Kavanaugh, who has been a professor of philosophy at Saint Louis
University since 1975, entered the Society of Jesus directly after
high school in 1959.

An alumnus of St. Louis University High School, he had a
girlfriend at the time but there was never a great deal of doubt in
his mind about his ultimate plans–the priesthood called.

“I was taken with the lives of Jesuit saints,” he says,
“Especially missionaries.”

He cites St. Francis Xavier and the French Jesuit Isaac Jogues
as an inspiration. Why missionaries? “Their zeal, commitment,
generosity, courage–they stuck by their virtues,” says
Kavanaugh.

Although Kavanaugh himself would for a time become a missionary
(in the mid 1970s he spent two years in India, in addition to time
in Africa and the Middle East), his capacity for philosophical
reflection led him back to the United States.

To understand Kavanaugh’s academic disposition, one must know
its origins. While studying for his master’s degree at SLU,
Kavanaugh took a seminar on philosophy and culture taught by a
professor from Washington University, the late Albert William Levi.
“I really loved it,” Kavanaugh says, “And I decided, if I could,
that I would study with Levi.”

Kavanaugh proceeded to study with Levi at Washington University,
and for the last 25 years has sought to critically engage the
culture: to identify and challenge the foundations on which people
make their decisions.

“I found very early that culture and the media are very powerful
components in how we perceive reality,” he said. “And in many ways,
the people who control culture and control media control the ethos,
the moral atmosphere.”

Beyond teaching courses on human nature and medical ethics, he
also writes prolifically. Every other week Kavanaugh’s
award-winning column, entitled “Ethics Notebook,” appears in the
Jesuit magazine America.

Kavanaugh describes his contributions to America as an “attempt
to engage your faith and your moral consciousness and apply it to
the contemporary world in America.”

Philosophy, however, is not the only spurring force when it
comes to confronting the culture: “The Christian life has to be a
transforming life for one’s self and the culture,” says Kavanaugh.
“Otherwise, it’s just holy cards.”

Though Kavanaugh has taught a number of courses during his time
at SLU, since the mid ’90s he has focused especially on medical
ethics, while also directing the University’s cross-disciplinary
Ethics Across the Curriculum.

“I’ve always been concerned about the lack of dignity recognized
in the poor, in criminals, in the unborn and in damaged people,”
Kavanaugh said.

“Those concerns moved me out of consumerism and into medical
ethics issues, especially life and death ones.”

After roughly a decade of reflection on such issues, Kavanaugh
in 2001 published what is–so far–his magnum opus: Who Counts as
Persons? Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing. The book,
according to Kavanaugh, is a “defense of the intrinsic dignity of
the human person.”

Faced daily with a culture that disparages the very dignity he
tries to defend, Kavanaugh admits to moments of pessimism but is
quick to acknowledge his wellsprings of hope, which include his
religious principles as well as the young men and women he
encounters and instructs in the classroom.

“Other than my faith in Christ, it’s mainly students who’ve
given me hope in this world.

Not only do they have good intelligence, they have a rare
combination of intellect plus passion, plus zeal, plus service:
those are rare,” Kavanaugh said.

And what does Kavanaugh hope students will come away with from
his courses?

More than anything, he hopes his courses impart an “openness
that even the least human being has a sacredness, even in our
vulnerability; that a human being has a sacredness and beauty and
vulnerability that requires us to embrace him or her, rather than
destroy them.”