25. ETHICAL THEORIES

     Theorists in the ethical tradition share the assumption that reason functions as a detached, disinterested, god-like perspective on language, experience and reality.  Implicitly, they assume that a literary construct functions as an arena in which critics attempt to forge a second level language about language capable of accrediting definitive judgments on all possible moral issues.  On its part, the arena defines moral issues as responses to the dictum, "Might makes right" and to the cultural relativity of moral notions.  And it promises that a theory which satisfies the criteria dictated by this conception of reason will triumph over all contending theories.

    Historically, the ethical theories which are still locked in contention attract adherents because they probe a distinctive dimension of human existence in depth and detail.  To justify the closure on questioning implicit in any judgment, however, they must ground moral discourse outside of human reality or in some limited conception of human reality.  (E.g., the will of God, the voice of reason, the autonomous individual, the inexorable march of history.)  Taken seriously, they are therefore dehumanizing and depersonalizing.

    Nonetheless, they have enriched the understanding of the workings of moral discourse immeasurably.  Consequently, in Christian Ethics:  An Ethics of Intimacy, I went to considerable lengths to show how theories which explored five dimensions of human existence enriched the ethics of intimacy.  Thus, through an ethical theory which focused empirical analyses of moral notions on the issue of character, Aristotle illuminated the hard fact that our actions are formative of the sort of person we become, regardless of our intentions.   Centuries later, Hobbes and Locke used naturalistic conventions forged by Aristotle to center their diverging conceptions of a purportedly primordial social contract in a theory which reduced human motivation to a natural desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain, with reason as the only escape from a perpetual war of all against all.  To replace the authority of political theories indebted to Hobbes and Locke with their own social concerns, Utilitarians focused instead on the social consequences of actions.  Then, to reject Utilitarianism in any shape or form, Kant used Hume's empirical critique of rationalism to argue that we can never know with certainty either the short-term or long-term consequences of actions.  In place of consequences, he focused exclusively on intention.  (In his Critique of the Metaphysics of Morals, the only valid moral intention is a willingness to do one's duty as that duty is defined by a categorical imperative one dictates to oneself.)  Then, in the twentieth century, Sartre both utilized and subverted Kant's conception of the autonomous individual in an analysis of a formless, unbounded consciousness which ensured that, in every conscious experience, individuals are confronted with a potentially infinite number of possible actions (responses) to whatever is presented in a contingent datum of consciousness.

    When I mapped this inter-textual dialogue onto the form of life which transforms the longing for intimacy into a realizable quest, I found that each of these theories illuminates moral issues in potentially fruitful ways.  But I also found that those who use a particular theory to rationalize their moral judgments clothe a hidden will to power in a narrowly focused theory generated by the rule of reason.

    I continue to hope that academic inhabitants of the ethical tradition will begin to appreciate the postmodernist insight that tangled moral issues lie, inextricably, at the core of every human action and assertion.  If they do, they will see, starkly, that their use of reason as a detached, god-like perspective on the human quest generates rhetorics which rationalize the rule of a power-that-be.

    Since I analyze moral discourse from the perspective offered by Wittgenstein's analysis of everyday languages, I revise the metaphor which led philosopher in ancient Greece to privilege the political over the personal dimensions of experience.  This metaphor envisioned the city as the cradle and crucible of both culture and civilization.   My revision envisions everyday language as the cradle and crucible of moral discourse.  First and foremost, this language transmits a form of life which enables language-users to transform a longing for intimacy into a realizable quest.  The realizability of the quest is attested by all the tests which the implications of the metaphor of intimacy successful passed.  But everyday English also transmits forms of life indebted to the analyses of language and experience generated by the metaphor of power and judgment, and these forms of life also enable language-users to achieve distinctive purposes conducive to the quest for an ever more fully human and uniquely personal existence.  In the end, however, I cannot allow any of these purposes to stifle my elusive longing for ever-deepening intimacy with each Person in the triune God and with those I love.

    In short, given my intense longing to live with personal integrity, I cannot submit to a second-level language designed to accredit moral judgments or imperatives generated by a metaphor of power and judgment.  Those imperatives are voiced by the cries of the oppressed, dispossessed, marginalized, silenced, outcast, and even by barbarians outside the walls, while judgments are always informed by a hidden will to power.  And in my everyday experience, I now see that such lapses are counter-productive, self-destructive, and wounding to anyone who trusts me.

     Since I analyze moral discourse from the perspective offered by Wittgenstein's analysis of everyday languages, I revise the metaphor which led philosophers in ancient Greece to privilege the political over the personal dimensions of experience.  Their metaphor envisioned the city as the cradle and crucible of both culture and civilization.   My revision envisions everyday language as the cradle and crucible of moral discourse.  First and foremost, this language transmits a form of life which enables language-users to transform a longing for intimacy into a realizable quest.  The realizability of the quest is attested by all the tests which the implications of the metaphor of intimacy successfully passed.  But everyday English also transmits forms of life indebted to the analyses of language and experience generated by the metaphor of power and judgment, and these forms of life also enable language-users to achieve distinctive purposes conducive to the quest for an ever more fully human and uniquely personal existence.  In the end, however, I cannot allow any of these purposes to stifle my elusive longing for ever-deepening intimacy with each Person in the triune God and with those I love.

    In short, given my intense longing to live with personal integrity, I cannot submit to a second-level language designed to accredit moral judgments or imperatives generated by a metaphor of power and judgment.  Those imperatives are voiced by the cries of the oppressed, dispossessed, marginalized, silenced, outcast, and even by barbarians outside the walls, while judgments are always informed by a hidden will to power.  And in my everyday experience, I now see that such lapses are counter-productive, self-destructive, and wounding to anyone who trusts me.