"Ja! Nein!" - Foto le Alasdair Nicol (flickr)
EITIC
agus an caractar daonna.
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ETHICS
and the human character.
What is called the 'character' of man is the individual result of a pedagogical shaping of the flexible hereditary factors of disposition of the inner act-life in its confrontation with the influences of social environment. It belongs to the bodily existence of man, as will be explained more in detail in my anthropology. The human body is not at all identical with an abstract 'physico-psychical soma'; it is the structural whole of temporal human existence in the intermodal coherence of all its modal aspects.
It may be that 'character' is to be sought especially in the volitional direction of the inner act-life; nevertheless it cannot be identified with the moral aspect-function of the volitional disposition or -inclination in its individual shape and stamp. Therefore the relating of virtue to character, as is done in modern times by the Dutch philosopher G. HEYMANS (1), cannot give a modal delimitation to the field of ethics. Psychology, too, has much to do with the human character (2).
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(1) Einführung in die Ethik, Leipzig (1922).
(2) HEYMANS (op. cit. p. 43) defines character as 'the totality of the inclinations of the individual in their mutual relations of strength' (die Gesamtheit der Neigungen dieses Individuums in ihren gegenseitigen Stärkeverhältnissen); or as 'the whole of the laws, in conformity to which in this individual stronger or weaker motives evoke stronger or weaker wishes and thereby contribute more or less to the determination of the particular volitional decisions' (die Gesamtheit der Gesetze, nach welchen bei diesem Individuum verschiedene Motive stärkere oder schwächere Wünsche hervorrufen und dadurch mehr oder weniger zur Bestimmung der einzelnen Willensentschlüsse beitragen".)
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But the moral aspect is different from that of feeling, although HEYMANS seeks the origin of the ethical norm in a specific moral feeling. Nevertheless HEYMANS speaks of 'character' in its relation to the standards of good and evil as the veritable object of ethical judgment and defines ethics as the 'science of good and evil'. But it has appeared that in their scientific use the latter terms are analogical ones. They lack, as such, modal delimitation of sense. If we mean moral good and evil we must be able to indicate the modal meaning-kernel of morality in order to escape the vicious circle inherent in every undefined analogy.
HEYMANS' merely formal ethical criterium of 'objectivity' or 'universality' has no moral meaning at all.
Only with reference to the central religious sphere may the terms good and evil be used in their fulness of meaning without any modal qualification. As to their ethical sense we must agree with NIETZSCHE and NICOLAI HARTMANN: 'We do not yet know what good and evil may be' (3).
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(3) NICOLAI HARTMANN, Ethik (1926, Berlin and Leipzig) p. 40.
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Why a moral law-sphere must exist.
Now it cannot be denied that in the cosmic order of time a modal law-sphere must exist which succeeds the juridical and precedes the ultimate limiting aspect, viz, that of faith. This is demonstrated by our previous analysis of the anticipatory moments in the modal structure of the legal law-sphere, which, as soon as they are realized in a positive legal order, appear to open and deepen the retributive meaning of this modal sphere. Modal meaning-figures, such as juridical guilt, good faith, good morals, equity, and so on, undeniably refer to a later modal aspect of experience which cannot be designated by another term than the moral or ethical sphere. The anticipatory meaning-moments concerned refer neither immediately to the faith aspect, nor immediately to the central religious sphere.
In pre-juridical aspects, such as the psychical [sensory], we have also discovered anticipatory relations with an ethical law-sphere.
This does not prove the existence of a natural morality apart from the religious centre of human existence. It proves only that in the temporal modal horizon of experience there exists a modal ethical aspect which is not to be identified with the super-modal sphere of religion, nor with the aspect of faith.
Therefore the conception developed especially by KARL BARTH, that there is no room for ethics as a specific science different from theological dogmatics, cannot be maintained. But this does not detract from the extremely difficult problem we are confronted with, if from the Biblical-Christian standpoint the attempt is made to account for the relation between the ethical aspect and the central commandment of Love. The question of the modal meaning-kernel of this aspect urges itself upon Christian thought as a real 'Cape Horn' (4) of Christian ethics.
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(4) Cape Horn was notorious for its dangerous storms.
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Criticism of KANT'S criterion of morality. Love and the imago Dei.
Before considering this problem in greater detail we must return to KANT's criterion of morality, explained above. It must be established that his 'Gesinnungsethik' ["Ethics of attitude/conviction"]* was really meant to replace the central commandment of Love in its religious fulness of meaning. This commandment requires us to love God and our neighbour with our whole heart. It is the very nature of love in this central religious sense that it implies complete self-surrender. We cannot really love in this fulness of meaning of the word so long as we experience its requirement as a law which urges itself upon us externally, contrary to the inner inclination of our heart. This love must penetrate our inner selves, it must inflame the centre of our existence and permeate it so that it has become one with us, and reflects in our heart the Divine Love as the answer of the human I to the call of its Origin, the Divine Thou.
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*FMF - "Denn das Wort Gottes ist lebendig und wirksam und schärfer als jedes zweischneidige Schwert, und es dringt durch, bis es scheidet Seele und Geist, auch Mark und Bein, und ist ein Richter der Gedanken und Gesinnungen des Herzens." (Hebraeer 4:12)
["Oir tha facal Dhè beò agus cumhachdach, agus nas gèire na claidheamh dà fhaobhair air bith, a' ruigheachd eadhon a-chum eadar-sgaradh an anama agus an spioraid, agus nan alt agus nan smear, agus a' toirt breith air smuaintean agus rùintean a' chridhe." (Eabh. 4:12)]
["For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)]
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*FMF - "Denn das Wort Gottes ist lebendig und wirksam und schärfer als jedes zweischneidige Schwert, und es dringt durch, bis es scheidet Seele und Geist, auch Mark und Bein, und ist ein Richter der Gedanken und Gesinnungen des Herzens." (Hebraeer 4:12)
["Oir tha facal Dhè beò agus cumhachdach, agus nas gèire na claidheamh dà fhaobhair air bith, a' ruigheachd eadhon a-chum eadar-sgaradh an anama agus an spioraid, agus nan alt agus nan smear, agus a' toirt breith air smuaintean agus rùintean a' chridhe." (Eabh. 4:12)]
["For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)]
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This is the real meaning of the imago Dei. It explains why the human ego can be nothing in itself as an autonomous being. It explains why the fall into sin has radically obscured this imago Dei, so that it is only revealed in its original sense in the infinite love of Jesus Christ in His complete self-surrender to His heavenly Father and to lost mankind. Only from Him can this love flow into the human heart. Apart from Him we do not know it, nor can there be any volitional disposition worthy of the name of 'good' in its proper religious sense.
KANT's 'Gesinnungsethik' has secularized this religious state of things. It sought the true self, the real autos of man, in a 'pure will' which identifies itself with the ethical law originating from practical reason, so that autos and nomos become one and the same. But love is rejected in this ethics as the real moral motive of human behaviour. It is replaced by the respect for the ethical law in its pure form of categorical imperative, which in the last analysis means nothing but respect for the 'Idea of Mankind' in the sense of the Humanist personality-ideal. Love, on the contrary, is viewed as a sensory inclination, which is an impure motive because it detracts from the autonomy of morality. Here the dialectical tension between nature and freedom, the Humanist science-ideal and personality-ideal manifests itself in a pregnant sense (5).
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(5) Cf. Vol. I, Part II.
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The Kantian conception of the freedom-motive seeks the true essence, the 'noumenon' of man, behind the temporal sensory reality of nature in the autonomous moral will as the law-giver for human conduct. That is why morality must be conceived of as entirely apart from the reality of nature and traced back to a pure, autonomous moral will. Legal order, however, has to reckon with 'empirical humanity' and should be content with the function of an order of external freedom in the coexistence of human individuals. It can be nothing but an order of peace.
But KANT is unable to indicate what modal meaning is to be attached to 'autonomous morality'. The modal meaning of a law-sphere can only disclose itself in the intermodal coherence of meaning of all the aspects and this very coherence has been torn up in the Kantian conception.
The sharp separation between moral disposition and natural sensuous inclination and the characterization of the impulse to follow the latter as the 'radical evil' in man, clearly shows the influence of the Christian conception of sin. But the latter has been secularized and denatured to an irreconcilable antithesis between two aspects of human existence and experience which are arranged by the temporal order of creation in an indissoluble structural coherence of meaning. The moral function of volition is closely connected with the volitional function in the aspect of feeling. There are moral feeling-drives which prevent man from an undisciplined surrender to sexual and other biotically founded impulses. Without the presence of such anticipatory drives in human feeling-life, the rational moral motives would be powerless.
Even the Kantian conception of the moral motive, that of duty or respect for the moral law, if it is to have any moral meaning, pre-supposes a moral feeling-drive. The complete lack of the latter and the presence of a rational idea of duty only is a well-known pathological phenomenon. KANT's rigid separation between morality and natural feeling-drives is in serious danger of legitimating such pathological disintegrations of the inner act-life. It is inhuman and a-moral in its logicistic formalizing of the meaning of ethical duty and ethical law.
On the other hand the thesis 'law only regulates external behaviour and is indifferent to motives' (6) is a clear proof that KANT does not only want to distinguish between law and morality, but really separates them.
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(6) This criterion was taken over from THOMASIUS, who made it serviceable to the defence of toleration in his doctrine of natural law.
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As a result the entire anticipatory structure of the modal meaning of the juridical aspect is misinterpreted. KANT only tries to maintain the connection between law and morality in an external teleological** way.
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**FMF - teleological: "showing evidence of design or purpose, especially in natural phenomena."
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He holds that juridical order is merely an order of legality, an order of external peace, which is meant to enable the individual to do his moral duties. But it has already appeared that the principle of guilt in criminal law and other anticipatory juridical concepts necessarily anticipate the moral meaning-aspect! They cannot be understood in their juridical sense without their internal coherence with morality.
The moral meaning-aspect is not itself the super-temporal root of human existence, in spite of KANT's doctrine. It is as temporal and as relative as all the other meaning-sides of temporal reality. But the moral sphere, just like all the others, has a modal meaning that is sovereign within its own boundaries. KANT's logicistic-moralistic view-point inevitably compelled him to eliminate this modal meaning. His ethics is in fact a religion of human personality in a specific Humanistic conception.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§5 pp 147-151)
