Happy Birthday Karl Barth!

Today in history is Karl Barth 120th birthday. In that spirit I enclose my final paper for ethical theory, and dedicate it to the beloved theologian from Bonn.

Recent criticisms have been leveled against ethical theory, judging that its analysis is superficial, that it cannot account for the human being which it aspires to speak about.¹ At the core, the criticisms are of its rationalistic tone and climate. This is not altogether insignificant, however, because a person's presuppositions determine what questions are asked, which thereby limit the kind of answers to be found. Insofar as these are valid criticisms of ethical theory, I would like to suggest four vindications of things lost by this approach and three accommodations of issues untouched or ignored, in order to steer the ship of ethical theory in a more prosperous direction. It should look close to an anti-theory or virtue approach, stricken through with Continental philosophy, aspects of Christian theology, but remain general enough not to stifle a wide variety of questions.

My goal is more to adjust the limits of the questions of ethical theory rather than to offer my disapproval of its particular quality which is all too insipid. I hope through this to nourish the soil of right practice, which all theory exists to do, rather than the sustenance of an isolated ivory tower. In this way, I agree with Aristotle, that virtue cannot be taught or commodified. No man has sole propriety on virtue, but we are her heirs, her gracious recipients. Yet, ethical theory exists as a conversation which is deeply shaped by the concerns of a person's particular kind of attunment, and while diversity of perspectives is welcome, certain questions actually are vicious and unwelcome, albeit destructive. Therefore, diversity for its own sake is not the goal of this endeavor, neither the freedom to be stubbornly wrong, but rather the freedom to ask the more helpful sorts of questions which will lead toward virtue and humanization for all participants.

It is too easy to be caught up in separating the conclusions of a person's inquiry from its process, the ideas from their context, and persons from their words. For while we are doing ethical theory, I propose that we be shaped by our ethical theory, or even better that our character would be purified² to make us better theorists.³ One of my problems with ethical theory, and modernity in general is its emphasis on the end result, the goal, the answer, while it is the process which stands as the apology and justification for how we arrived there. By examining the journey to a conclusion, we are either inclined and endeared or reluctant and repulsed, because the journey is uniquely human space, rather than decontextualized propositional statements. The journey is unique because it engages the uniquely human capacity to empathize. That said, I will begin with my first accommodation.

It seems as though ethical theory would benefit to begin with man's relatedness rather than his rationality. This does not deny what man is capable of, but rather affirms that he is more properly already in relation to others in the world. He cannot aspire to be related to others, no matter how he exists he is always already in relation to them. Through this inescapable phenomenon, we can agree with Emmanuel Levinas that ethics is first philosophy. We are born as creatures who are cared for and we cannot remember a time when we have not been invoked⁴. Therefore, rationality is the handmaid of relationality; it serves to teach us how to be properly related, authentically related, rather than inauthentically lost in our own existence.⁵ Bernard Williams shares this critique of ethical theory, which is caught up in what he calls “the rationalistic conception of rationality” with its truncated notion of the human, spawning inbred, illegitimate, and fragmented progeny (18).

Closely related is my first vindication. I propose what I will call the theory of “mysterious access,” which is the epistemological and relational mode understood by the scholastics through the category of analogy. It is defined against the competing notions of univocity and equivocity. Univocity represents a sort of hyper-imminence that reduces the other into the sameness of the self such that the other is no longer conceived of as other but as myself. It is mastery, complete and full, unadulterated access. This overeager desire to know actually damages the primordial ethical mandate to allow the other to maintain her freedom through her alterity. Yet, equivocity also forges a false relationship, by mandating that the other be wholly other. In this way, I respectfully disagree with John Caputo in his essay The End of Ethics. For if the other was Wholly Other, how would we even know that the other existed? Since the utter alterity of the other is wholly absurd, we are left with a more nuanced approach, that of analogy. The other is always disclosed through a particular means, a context, leaving much to be unseen and unknown. Much of what could be known lies within as potency, unknown until disclosure, but knowable to other human beings, and not easily reducible to a scientific schemata or set of categories which would “objectively” capture what has been seen.

Therefore, mysterious access guarantees real, authentic access, but not mastery, while retaining aspects of what I am calling mystery, that is, something other than myself which moves without my direction, and not always in predictable ways. It is only this posture which enables us to approach another human being fairly. The analogy of being gives us an adequate basis for rules, as it knits human beings together as creatures of like nature. While thinking of rules, we must respect rather than override the other humans which we speak of. For I agree with Caputo that rules and systems are necessary, but always approximate and penultimate, never final.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his book Notes from the Underground provides us a helpful and more concrete lens to ask our following questions which seek to redirect contemporary ethical theory in a promising direction. Dostoevsky is a credible source because, to use the words of G. E. M. Anscombe, he had “a sound philosophy of psychology” which has regretfully been missing from the dominant philosophical discourse for at least the past five hundred years (Crisp 30). After all, the Greeks found literature to be a helpful means for expressing ethical dilemmas, because of its unique way to engage the human. In literature a character can exist as a character, with contradiction and confusion, while in philosophy such a character is dubbed irrational and thereby nonexistent, explained away in mere sentences by knockdown arguments.

Thus literature proves to be a more humanizing supplement for applied philosophy in understanding the situatedness of philosophical questions, because as the particulars are intact, an ethical dilemma takes on greater life, and human beings are not so easily flattened to fit a system. Caputo calls this phenomenon singularity, that in a:

multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual world, where immigrants legal and illegal move freely about, where gay and lesbian rights are regularly defended, where medical advances throw us into confusion about who is the parent of whom, where human cloning is foreseeable, things are not so simple. (120)

Such a world does not call us to be conservative, to be moderate, to be hesitant and stingy, but rather it calls us to be radical. This is what Caputo sees in the concept of the gift, which is antithetical to giving someone what they deserve, the notion of justice traditionally put forth. If a gift is genuine, it means that you are willing to give it unconditionally to the other, for the good of the other, without strings attached. A gift is an overflow, an abundance, which is not deserved, and quite often unexpected. Therefore, he would incline us to pursue excessive kindness as the only hope and catalyst for social transformation.

To pause for a moment, change the tone of our prose, and introduce the chosen text. Notes from the Underground is a tragicomedy of a nameless, fictional, “Underground Man” who Dostoevsky says in the beginning footnote “not only may but even must exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society was formed” (5). He writes attentive to the climate of modernity, to the rationalistic philosophies of the good life which have trickled down into the popular awareness and lifestyle. He ultimately shows the fragmentation and absurdity that these unnatural systems inspire, the way they disrupt more human ways of living well. His antihero is a rambling, neurotic man of hyper-consciousness. This means that he is grasping for significance through control, through power, and through mastery. Again and again he shows us that he can get the better of us, that he has outsmarted us, while at the same time boasting in his wickedness which he explains brings him much delight, precisely because it belongs to him, as a genuine act of his freedom to choose. In a sense, this text shows the torment of a person who seeks to live under the teaching of the enlightenment, and evokes the rebellious will behind rationality which fights back when it is told to be suppressed, when the good life is mathematically determined to a tee.

At this point we should introduce our second vindication, the vindication of finitude over against man's aspiration to be infinite, unbounded, and free. It is not necessary to be beyond reproach to find significance in life. This is a dialectic tension which fuels extreme sports, the business world, and even the philosopher. It is the desire for more, to push limits, and to be the king of the hill. Unlike the tormenting aspirations of the Underground Man, we must be content not being the biggest, the best, or the brightest; we must learn to be content in our own skin, taking control of the sorts of things we can which do not cause internal fragmentation. We must get our minds out of the clouds, to flee from the naïve search for perfect, eternal, and internally consistent forms, to consider the ethical issue always at hand: how our actions affect those around us. The Underground Man struggles with accepting his finitude, for he would rather be ambiguous, and undefined. He says:

I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utter futile consolation that is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figure – primarily a limited being. (7)

Thus, what is shocking about this man is how honest he can be. There almost seems virtue in his honesty, something endearing. Yet, he is being mastered by his fear of being something rather than nothing, and has chosen the familiar, undefined state without risk against the great wall of deterministic rationality. For he chose to retire after receiving an inheritance, to live alone in a filthy, corner apartment, where his very existence haunts and torments him. He should be told that he already is something, and that enlightenment reason or arbitrary and defiant will are not his only two options, but that he can be a coherent person in relation to others, without needing to tirelessly justify his very existence. Thus, a proclamation of freedom to the captives of the insipid enlightenment logic.

The third vindication that I propose is a vindication of the ordinary. It is not altogether different than the vindication of finitude, but rather affirms that significance is primarily something which comes from our relatedness with others who are already around us. Rather than neglecting the persons around us as irrelevant in exchange for a solipsistic and idealistic philosophy, we must exorcise our minds of such rubbish and make space in our conception to allow the ordinary life to also be fully compatible with the good life. Thus, too deny the accessibility of the good life to all people, whether they are attuned to receive it or not, would easily promote a kind of suspicious historical snobbery, much less a kind of self-justifying arrogance.⁶

The fourth vindication to be proposed is a vindication of the sacred. It is not as though the modern person values nothing as sacred, rather that she has too limited and superficial a notion of it. As modern individualism teaches, the self alone is sacred, or that naked, unencumbered rationality is sacred. Yet, there is nothing personal about this. It is like worshiping an idol which stoically ignores all praise and laud. Such emptiness is without depth, and nothing more than dead ritual. The kind of sacred to be redeemed is the sacred personal, quite often also ordinary and finite (with the exclusion of God). When a human life is inclined toward virtue, there is depth and significance involved. To behold something as sacred shows that you are willing to sacrifice for it, that you are willing to endure pain for it, and that you will speak well of it. It shows that you are committed to something rather than nothing. The problem with the Underground Man is that he does not commit to anything except himself, which is dependent upon his mood and situation, depending on how the cards of power are currently stacked, he will be friendly or antagonistic. This, not only is lonely, but self-referentially incoherent. Granted this is not the same flaw as Kant who also would abhor such phenomena, yet it is distinctly modern, and the modern categories are insufficient to help him.

Nothing is more disturbing to behold than the way the Underground Man toys with those around him for his own pleasure, reacting against being toyed with himself by what society would call his superiors. After sleeping with a prostitute, he felt guilty for having sex without love, and proceeded to lecture her until she wept profusely. He spoke to her about dignity, quite passionately and truly, but while he believed what he was saying in his mind, he did not have the character to stand behind his words in his heart. He leaves her with his address inviting her out of her profession to live a life of beautiful monogamy. Yet, for the following days, he could not believe what he had done, and reneged mentally upon his commitment. When she finally arrived at his door expecting him to stand behind his commitment, he hated her for her innocence and purity, for having trusted him, and he took the occasion to humiliate her further. While he initially wept upon her arrival, he then spoke honestly about what had motivated him to speak the kinds of words he did the previous day. In the end, he sent her away from his house with money, to insult her even more, to get the better of her, to win (which ironically was a mutual net loss of trust, significance, and love). As she left, though, she dropped the crumpled money on his kitchen table, and he chased after her, recognizing her purity of character. She had fled so quickly that she was nowhere to be found. The irony of this story is that while he was seeking to dominate her, he had no categories to comprehend the selfless love she was offering him. She did not come to hear his soliloquies. She came bearing a gift. Yet, his immature game kept him from receiving that gift, perhaps the greatest gift anyone had given him, concern, the posture of respect, a belief in his dignity, unconditional love. Instead, he pursued the familiar, knowing that he did not merit or deserve the gift, and thereby shunned it. For the Underground Man, love was only the freedom to tyrannize someone else. He received the gift on his own terms, resented the undeserved grace, and flaunted it only to spite the other and show his superiority and strength of will to dominate her, exposing his insecure and deeply fragmented will to power. Such internal contradiction is not altogether without basis in human experience.

In response to this story I propose the second accommodation which I think ethical theory needs to heed in order to flourish, that is an accommodation of suffering and miserable people. Historically, ethical theory has been authored by the powerful, the strong, the able, and the educated, yet this sort of theory does not necessarily account best for the downtrodden, the ones in misery, and those who are suffering. It is an overly rosy and romanticized ideal which is inadequate to speak to real people who are messy and who do not come out living rationally according to the enlightenment or otherwise. Heidegger's work on angst is supremely helpful here. He says, “[n]ot-being-at-home must be conceived existentially and ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon” than being-at-home (177). This not-being-at-home brings forth the undirected fear called angst which overwhelms and disrupts one's complacency and situatedness. This in a way vindicates (but by no means excuses) human beings in their current, irrational and sinful state, without expecting them to be at home in the world.

Alienation is a more proper place to begin ethical theory, rather than the sort of psychology of enlightenment which sees human beings as born good, and only misdirected or uneducated. The Underground Man's problem was not one of ignorance. He was able to speak truthfully and compassionately to the prostitute. The problem is deeper, and cuts to the core of how we exist. This is not a forced, gloom and doom snapshot of human existence, but rather a realistic starting place to understand how our species exists, how the kinds of atrocities we have committed have made the last century the most bloody century in history. We can run, but we cannot hide. The problem is latent and within, and the solution is external and beyond our grasp. Can we really be strong enough to receive the gift? Can we take it in and be changed to thereby radically overcome the inertia of winning and thereby truly know and experience the other as something beyond my control, as someone sacred in need of love and compassion too? Can I offer this and truly back it up, with the knowledge of my own need and inadequacy to fulfill the ethical mandate of the golden rule⁷?

Much hinges upon the way one answers these questions. What is at stake is whether one is optimistic about the capability of man to fix his own problems, the solution of modernity, or whether there is something greater and beyond him necessary to help him. Dostoevsky painted this awful picture to point to a moment of hope. Considered alone, this story could just as easily support a nihilistic understanding of the human as the Christian understanding. Russian authorities at that time censored his chapter to which all this fragmentation pointed, where he exposed the “need for faith and Christ” (xviii).

As described earlier, Aristotle describes and defends human nature through the concept of habit. Our character is shaped just as much by our behavior as our behavior is shaped by our character. Therefore, virtue is circular in a way. To be virtuous, we must behave virtuously, and to become vicious is to behave viciously. Action determines habit, and inaction determines habit as well.

The Underground Man prizes himself for not being a man of action, rather his character is shown to be determined by incontinence or a weak will, at times even a vicious will, as he hopes to escape any sort of static or predictable character. Thomas Aquinas, who accepts Aristotle's notion of habit, conceives of grace as only breaking in upon the will through a physical infusion. It is not something which the human can create, but solely exists as a response to prior divine action. In a sense, then, the Underground Man is naturally confined to his misery, but in another sense, God uses means (Thomas saw the sacraments, while Protestants add to the sacraments to see various types of word as the occasions for gracious mediation) to turn the will from vice to virtue; God creates the occasion and sees to it that the conditions for man to receive the gift are properly satisfied.

Man is both responsible and yet not fully the master of his own destiny.⁸ Yet, misery disappears when the balm of mercy is applied. Therefore, upon sharing the burden of the miserable, the disheveled, and disfranchised, we are, in the words of Jesus, near to the Kingdom of God. Such beauty comes through the gospels, through secular literature, and ultimately through the universal human phenomenon of the gift. It can only be approached, however, by asking the questions which the powerful do not want to ask, thereby disrupting the status quo. For if we are hoping to be ethical people, we have no choice but to associate with the lowly, knowing that we are not far from them, and that they are perhaps often conditioned to be uniquely receptive to the gift. Also, we must not be afraid of disrupting the status quo for the sake of mediating something deeper than words can contain. As recipients of the gift, we are equipped to endure suffering in order to assure that others have the occasion whereby they might actually receive the gift, even if they respond in a way not unlike the Underground Man.

My third and final point of accommodation is to accommodate the phenomenon of play and its close relative, of distraction, into our ethical framework. The enlightenment man, as well as the Underground Man, are busy people. They have no ultimate reason for peace and have no rational basis to rest, unless they are lazy or take the nihilistic turn. The hyper-conscious man sees greater knowledge as what will ultimately save him, what will bring him the kind of consolation which will ultimately let him rest, but like Levinas' infinite obligation to the other, so this man has an infinite obligation to save himself, and an infinite debt which he perceives within the eternal trap of finitude. These are unsatisfactory circumstances, and Dostoevsky knows this as he writes. Karl Barth, however, speaks wisely to us which saves us from endless work, stoicism, and the inclination toward deism. He tells us that because God is God and we are not, we are not to be God to God, which is entirely absurd, but instead we are to be God's children who play and receive with open hands what God has given. This posturing of God's sovereignty, affirms that he is for us, allows us to rest in his goodness, to not spin the wheels of our lives to the point of exhaustion. Paul Metzger summarizes Barth thusly:

When humanity explores and creates from what is already given it, exploring and creating for the sheer joy of doing so, humanity affirms God's good creation. The word most fitting to express this idea is that of “play.” True play is bound up with an understanding of creaturely freedom within limits, which involves a total disregard for self-conscious absorption. Even human work is to be play. Humanity should not take itself too seriously, not be preoccupied with thoughts of self-importance or self-loathing, but should consider its work as play, serious play perhaps, but play nonetheless. When humans simply act within their range of potentialities and respective interests, resting even in their work, simply reveling in, preforming the existence which is theirs, which is given, they affirm God in their cultural endeavors, the God whose work is truly work. (206-207)

This quote sounds exactly as though it was created for the Underground Man, to give him the sort of peace which he so desperately fidgets for. It tells us that as humans, we cannot create this peace, but we can receive it. Our lives are not ultimately in our own hands, but in the hands of Another, and that is okay. The Other has been proved trustworthy through the historic occasions which he has covenanted with humanity, put his name on the line, and been shown faithful.

While we now see the phenomenon of play in its goodness, we need to also understand that distraction is a gift from God, given to help revive us as we play. Therefore, distraction should not always be approached with annoyance and frustration, but sometimes embraced insofar as it refocuses our attunement to the sorts of things we ought to be attuned to. While watching television might be a contestable sort of distraction, the arts, sports, recreation, and human relationships all can serve to reinvigorate and humanize the human. Yet, at the same time, they can also be occasions where the human refuses to receive the kind of rest which was given to revive her, such that she spins her wheels to the point of exhaustion and a crash. Therefore, in our ethical theorizing, we must understand the need to rest, be distracted, and be engaged in the playful dance of creation, such that we can encourage others to be thusly inclined toward the good life, and the whole person will flourish.

In conclusion, ethical theory has too often accounted for the strong, the rational, the ones who have things together, and has not taken into account those who are weak, irrational, and broken. We have asked certain questions: what does living well matter to ethics? What has a philosophy of psychology to do with ethical theory? What has the negative, the warped, the despicable, the miserable have to do with the good and the beautiful? How does our attunement affect our receptivity to those who are broken? How might we be attuned toward wisdom and charity, toward empathy and care for the other? We have recognized that all others are more than we see and that all others are spiritually, to some degree, broken. Therefore, we should never treat an other in such a way that does not humanize her, that by being loved she would find healing to the brokenness and misery bothering her, to find freedom and embrace grace as sweet, as a gift. Until we know what it is like to live in a broken world, our pleasures cannot be anything but superficial, for they are ignorant and stupid. They are fleeting. We who want to love our neighbor must behave in ways that do not level her into the categories which will de facto fit our theories. For if we are so busy speaking and sorting rather than listening and caring in the middle of life's storms, we are no consolation to the ones hurting around us, and our lives prove meaningless. We have a deep obligation to the other, even if the other is not wholly other, and even if the obligation is not infinite. We have this merely as humans, but we become aware of it only as Christians. We have seen the chains of modernity loosed in several accommodations and vindications and ultimately these redefined limits should supply us with the kind of framework and philosophy of psychology to ask and make sense of the questions of ethics. While not mastering them, we now have the kind of space needed to understand the wrenching antinomies of human life such as wisdom and brokenness, love and pain, fear and courage, tears and striving, even suffering and rejoicing. Such a redefinition of ethical theory may be mere baby steps, but after all, each child must learn to take baby steps before she can run a marathon.

Works Cited

Anscombe, G. E. M. Virtue Ethics. Eds. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. Trans. Richard Pever and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Everyman's Library, 1993.

Caputo, John. Blackwell Studies in Ethics. Ed. Hugh Follette. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

Horton, Michael S. Covenant and Eschatology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.

Horton, Michael S. Lord and Servant. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Metzger, Paul Louis. The Word of Christ and the World of Culture. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.

Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

1Such criticisms are leveled by G.E.M. Anscombe in her article Modern Moral Philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, and John Caputo in his article The End of Ethics, to name a few.

2Language like “purified”is teleological, reminiscent of concepts like “the good,””the beautiful,” and “the true.” While I am a metaphysical realist, and I do believe in ontological structures, I am closer to a critical realist who does not believe these things come so easily carved up. Thus, requiring immense charity, humility, care, and wisdom to make any progress in epistemology, I would hope to follow Thomas Aquinas and not dislocate such superlative ideas outside of their known particulars.

3Here we can follow the lead of Hans Frei, the famous postliberal theologian. He says, “Someone has rightly said, 'A person either has character or he invents a method.' I believe that and have been trying for years to trade method for character, since at heart I really don't believe in independent methodological study of theology [or philosophy] (I think the theory is dependent on the practice), but so far I haven't found that I'm a seller to myself as a purchaser” (Horton, Covenant and Eschatology 1).

4Interestingly enough, “[i]nvocation, as Levinas has reminded us, is the most appropriate epistemological corollary to an ontology of otherness” (Horton, Lord and Servant 18).

5Martin Heidegger develops this thoroughly in his famous Being and Time with the concept of Mit-Da-sein in Book 1, sections 26-27.

6To give an example of this which I have observed, Mark Noll, world renowned academic and historian of American religion, often works happily “tending his garden” in the nursery of his church. He spends time with the infants during the service so that the other parents can attend without worry. The beauty of this is that he is not too accomplished to appreciate and embrace the everyday significance of children, whether it be holding them, or even changing their diapers. He recognizes that he is not defined firstly by his work or success, but rather by his humanity and relatedness. Love, service, and sacrifice mean more to human beings than titles and accolades. This is as it should be, a model of humility and virtue for us to follow.

7Alan Donagan gives a historical argument for the rationality of the golden rule, which he calls the Fundamental Principle, on pages 57-66 of his classic ethical textbook, The Theory of Morality. His keen observations here ought to be heeded, that this concept is clearly accessible enough to be common to all people, although not all people put it into practice, and many try to defy it. Such defiance goes to only confirm its presence upon their minds, that they would take the time and effort to escape it as what the Underground Man calls the wall of “the laws of nature.”

8Thomas Nagel's article called Moral Luck explains the ins and outs of how this phenomenon can be.