"Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground" (final lithograph of Käthe Kollwitz, 1942)
An t-ais-bhrath sòisealta
ann an ciall mhodalach a' GHRÀIDH.
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De sociale retrocipatie
in den modalen zin der LIEFDE.
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The social retrocipation
in the modal meaning of LOVE.
As a result of the primordial confusion of the ethical and the central religious sphere, BRUNNER opposes love of one's neighbour in an ethical sense, as absolute love, to the love between husband and wife and that between mother and child (1).
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(1) Op cit., p. 315/6.
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From the ethical viewpoint as such this opposition is meaningless. Love in its modal-ethical nuclear meaning just as love in the religious fulness of its sense implies the relation to the neighbour. But within the ethical aspect this love of one's neighbour occurs in a very rich variety of social forms, in the correlation of communal and inter-individual relations. This correlation is a social retrocipation in the modal structure of morality. It is precisely this retrocipation of the aspect of social intercourse which in coherence with the typical totality structures of temporal society --- occasions a rich diversity and variety in the relations of moral love, which are in principle misinterpreted by individualistic ethics. The universal love of one's neighbour in the moral inter-individual relations is something different from the communal love between parents and children, husband and wife; something different also from the love of one's country; the love of one's mate in a labour-community, etc.
Without this social retrocipation love in its modal ethical sense cannot exist. Only in the religious fulness of meaning is the love of one's neighbour no longer differentiated according to the temporal communal and inter-personal relations of this life. In Jesus Christ there is no difference between Jew and Greek, master and servant, fellow-countryman and foreigner, kin and outsiders.
In his subjective moral function, however, man is subject to the temporal moral law as a law of love in accordance with the temporal communal relations (Honour thy father and thy mother) and the inter-individual relationships.
BRUNNER, however, in his erroneous abstract conception of the 'law', thinks that the commandment of Love cancels the concept 'law', as the law is supposed at once to divert our attention from the 'Legislator' Himself and to turn it to that which has been commanded. Abstraction, universality is inherent in the 'law', according to him, and he thinks that obedience to God's law is mere legality.
As a matter of fact he only strikes a blow here at the rationalistic 'metaphysical' idea of law as it is found in scholastic ethics of the XIXth century and in Kantian moral philosophy. He appears not to have overcome it because of his relative recognition of the Divine ordinances conceived of in the sense of rigid, impersonal rules. [Inderdaad treft hij hier slechts de rationalistische ‘metaphysieke’ opvatting van de wet, zooals zij in de Thomistische en Kantiaansche moraalphilosophie wordt gevonden en die hij door zijn relatieve erkenning ervan ook niet overwonnen blijkt te hebben. (WdW Deel2 p101)] This is due to the fact that BRUNNER, just as AALDERS, has accepted the dialectical opposition of the existential I-thou relation and the impersonal I-it relation of experience. Within this framework the 'law' can only belong to the latter and is interpreted in an impersonal, abstract, and rigid sense. In addition, both this depreciation and relative recognition of the law could appeal to LUTHER's dialectical conception of the Divine ordinances in the state of sin. But the right relation between the central commandment of Love and the temporal ethical sphere cannot be discovered from this dialectical standpoint.
Within the temporal order of modal aspects the fulness of the meaning of justice can express itself in an non-analogical manner in the relative modality of retribution alone; in the same way the fulness of the meaning of love is expressed unequivocally within this temporal order in its moral modality only.
In their religious fulness love and justice coalesce, just as in this totality of meaning all the modal meaning-aspects of the cosmos find their fulfilment because of their religious concentration on the Divine Origin. In the refractional order of cosmic time they are mutually irreducible modal aspects of meaning, which cannot be reduced to one logical denominator without internal antinomy.
All other known criteria of morality, sought outside of the theoretically analysed meaning-modus of love, prove to fail when the test of the modal analysis of meaning is applied to them.
In its analogical meanings love functions in all the Substratum-spheres of the moral aspect by way of anticipation. In its original modal sense it can only function in the moral law-sphere. As an original meaning-nucleus, however, it can find its expression within the modal structure of this sphere solely in the coherence of all the retrocipations in which the inter-modal coherence of meaning with the substratum-spheres expresses itself. This retrocipatory structure guarantees the temporal relative character of the moral aspect and should be a warning against every confusion of love as its modal nucleus with the fulness of meaning of the religious Agapè. It should also warn us against every identification of love in its original modal sense with an anticipatory feeling-drive.
Moral love has a rational foundation though it also has a feeling-substratum. It is not pre-logical as feeling is. It implies personal responsibility and is regulated by a normative standard. Thus it is understandable that the apostle speaks of the duty of the husband to love his own wife. By the intermediary of the Christian faith this moral duty is directed concentrically to the love of Christ (to His Bride) in its religious fulness of meaning. Nevertheless it retains its logical foundation. In order to elucidate this rational foundation of love in its modal moral sense it is necessary to pay attention to the juridical analogy in its modal structure.
The retributive analogy in the modal meaning of love.
De vergeldingsanalogie in den modalen zin der liefde.
In the modal ethical relation love manifests itself on the normative law-side only in a well-balanced proportion between self-love and love of one's neighbour. This is not the same as the equality of self-love and love of the neighbour in the radical religious commandment. When the latter says that we shall love our neighbour as ourselves, this means that the central love of God implies the love of His image equally in ourselves and in our fellow-men. The I-Thou relation to God implies the religious I-we relation to our neighbour. In the temporal moral relation, however, it is necessary to seek a just balance in love between our moral duties with respect to our own ethical personality and to that of our fellow-men. In the moral relation to our neighbour love undoubtedly demands self-denial, but not at the cost of our ethical personality, which is a temporal expression of our I-ness, as the religious centre of our existence. In practising love of our neighbour we also have to take into account the typical differentiation of the ethical relation of neighbourliness brought about by the social structures of individuality.
There ought to be a moral balance between conjugal love and parental love, between love of one's country and love of foreigners, and in general between love in communal and inter-individual relations.
In the primitive or closed conception of the love-relation, which is not yet opened by the Christian faith, the circle of 'neighbours' may still be restricted to the membership of the natural family, the 'sib', the 'tribe' or the 'nation'; but here, too, the ethical meaning of love can only express itself in an equal measure of self-love and love of one's neighbour in the different social relations. Uncontrolled outbursts of love lacking this balance do not even correspond to the primitive norm of morality. The equality of proportions primarily refers back to the retributive meaning-kernel of the juridical aspect, although it also implies
an economical retrocipation (2).
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(2) The aesthetic retrocipation manifests itself in the harmonizing of the different duties of love; the economical retrocipation is revealed in the just distribution of the sacrifices demanded by love with respect to the different moral duties.
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Nobody can truly love his neighbour without observing the exigences of retribution. That is why all the moral commandments of the Decalogue (the second table of the Law) (3) make an appeal to the legal order. The commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill', has no ethical meaning of love without this juridical foundation. Anyone who rejects the demands of retribution does harm to his neighbour in the sense condemned by the moral law of love, as it is expressed in the commandment mentioned; for he delivers him up to injustice and violence (4).
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(3) The first table in its temporal (modal) meaning refers to the modal aspect of faith, especially to the worship of God.
(4) CALVIN continually emphasized this relation between justice and love in the divine world-order. This has been proven by my late friend Prof. Dr. J. BOHATEC of the University of Vienna, who presents an elaborate list of sources in his important work Calvin und das Recht (Verlag: Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt G.m.b.H., Feudungen in Westphalen, 1934). This book is partially based on fresh material from the sources. BOHATEC writes here: 'by opposing love and justice, freedom and compulsion, the Anabaptists, as is well-known, have forced a problem on the Reformation. CALVIN does not try to get round it. Against the one-sided solution of the Anabaptists who reject the State and law, he argues that it is in the interest of love to maintain justice and the ordinances connected with it. A man who is inspired by true love will not think of harming his brother; on the contrary, he will strive after preserving everybody's rights and after protecting him from injustice." ["durch die Gegenüberstellung von Liebe und Recht, Freiheit und Zwang, hatten bekanntlich die Täufer der Reformation ein Problem aufgedrängt. CALVIN weicht dem Problem nicht aus. Gegen die Anabaptistische einseitige, Staat und Recht verneinende Lösung betont er, dass es im Interesse der Liebe liegt, wenn das Recht und die damit zusammenhängende Ordnung aufrecht erhalten bleibe. Wen die echte Liebe beseelt, dem wird es nicht in den Sinn kommen, seinen Bruder zu verletzen; er wird vielmehr trachten, dass jedermann sein Recht unverletzt bleibe und dass alle gegen das Unrecht geschützt werden."]. Cf. with this Op. 49, 252 ff.; 26, 313 ff.; 27, 556, 564; 27, 560; 26, 502 ff.; 27, 588.
In the passage quoted first CALVIN very significantly writes: "‘ergo violat caritatem si quis ἀναρχίαν inducit, quam statim consequitur rerum omnium perturbatio..." ["thus it infringes love if someone seeds anarchy, so triggering comprehensive confusion... (FMF)" ]
In the second passage he observes: ‘ST PAUL nous rameine à la charité, quand il expose ce commendement d'obeyr aus Magistrats’. ['ST PAUL refocuses us on love, when he expounds this injunction to submit to the Magistrates' (FMF)"] Not, of course, in such a way, that justice could be reduced to love in the temporal meaning of both, but in such a way that love rests on the foundation of justice.
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The internal antinomy arising from the theoretical eradication
of the modal boundaries of justice and love.
De innerlijke antinomie, welke bij de theoretische nivelleering
van de modale zingrenzen van recht en liefde ontstaat.
Whoever tries to read retributive meaning into this commandment itself, after the manner of Aristotelian Scholasticism, gets involved in antinomy. Retribution may demand a man's life, and in principle, it demands satisfaction for injustice committed. The Thomistically orientated Roman Catholic philosopher of ethics, VICTOR CATHREIN, tries to avoid this antinomy by reading the commandment as follows: 'Thou shalt not kill unlawfully' (5).
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(5) Recht, Naturrecht und positives Recht (2e Aufl. 1909), p. 223.
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But then the meaning of the commandment is distorted. In the moral relation of love the norm is fully determined in its modal meaning and allows of no exceptions. The judge passing a death sentence, the soldier shooting at the enemy, they all continue to be subject to the commandment of love: 'Thou shalt not kill' (6).
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(6) Cf. CALVIN, op. 27, 560; — 26, 502 ff.; — 27, 588.
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No hatred, no enmity against the neighbour may inspire him, although as a consequence of the fall of mankind into sin there may arise nearly intolerable tensions in human conscience between the moral duty of love and the legal duty of retribution. But the addition of the word 'unlawfully' deprives the moral commandment of all meaning or makes it contradictory. It becomes meaningless if with this addition it is understood as a legal principle. All that follows after the word 'unlawfully' is redundant, for I ought not to do anything unlawfully. On the standpoint of retribution the most important thing is to know what is to be understood by 'unlawfully' and 'natural law' cannot appeal to positive legal rules to find out what 'unlawfully' means in the context of a principle that has not yet been positivized. The commandment would be rendered contradictory if, in spite of the addition of the world 'unlawfully', it is interpreted in the modal meaning of love. For then it would run as follows: 'Thou shalt not bear hatred to anybody unlawfully, since hatred is the origin of homicide.' As if it were possible to hate one's neighbour lawfully!
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All the meaning-structures, very briefly analysed in the preceding paragraphs revealed the temporal order in the coherence of the law-spheres. This temporal order cannot be ignored with impunity by theoretical thought in the formation of its concepts.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§5 pp 158-163)
