NOTE : this paper was delivered at the PDG Conference, Braziers Park, May 2000.
I find it remarkable that though I studied ethics for a degree I cannot recall ever being guided in a moral choice by ethical considerations drawn from those studies. When confronted by a moral demand, even when it is a novel situation, I don't need to think about what to do, I just act. I shall examine this response of non-rational ethics and the failure of classical ethics by asking the question "What is man / woman for?"
The answer to this question is almost always "man is for himself". Moral choices are rare. Each day all of us perform over a thousand actions which serve our own purposes or those of a choice of social groups to which we choose to belong. One can be certain that no two persons will fulfil exactly the same list of individual and social group purposes. In evolutionary terms this means that every niche on the vast metaphysical rock of possible and potential nesting sites for man's purposes to hatch into fulfilment, every site will one day be occupied. This is good news for fulfilling mankind's potential.
On rare occasions we can serve the purposes of others and not ourselves, that is, we take moral action. There are two approaches, to neither of which classical ethics is relevant. I look first at general public issues and then at particular interpersonal choices.
The classical error was to assume that there is an unchanging ethical domain where principles are established as templates for all future action. Today we are involved in ethical scenarios which were not visible in my student days such as gender, environmental, medical dilemmas which require creativity to resolve. My colleagues devise ways to monitor end use of arms sales by electronic tagging or bar coding. They seek ways of making Third World debt forgiveness acceptable to rich countries by diverting repayments to aid education and health. They shift the focus of gender studies to Third World farming where development often exacerbates inequalities. The generating of imaginative creative solutions to moral dilemmas owes nothing to formal ethics and more perhaps to poetry. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world;" wrote Shelley.
I want now to consider particular situations where we are able to take responsibility for alleviating suffering and take as an unambiguous example a child suffering cruelty. Would we need to pause for ethical debate before acting? Would we only take action if a divine or unacknowledged lawgiver had laid down an absolute decree that we should do so? Kant would have us ask whether preventing child cruelty could be made into a universal law. But would our taking action ever be dependent on that question? Would we calculate on a Utilitarian scale of the greatest happiness of the greatest number before acting? Because such philosophy was an obvious failure, attention moved away from the question they attempted to answer "What ought I to do?" and revived the Aristotelian concept of virtue : "What sort of person ought I to be?"
The fighting bands of Sparta and Athens had developed a code of honour that emphasised a correct decree of trust, bravery, mutual aid and loyalty. But a problem arises when we consider honour amongst thieves. Bands of crooks can also value trust, gang loyalty, bravery and co-operation. So virtue can be used for vicious purposes.
If we abandon the egocentric questions "What ought I to do and what sort of person ought I to be?"; is there a third option? I think we should consider our nature and ask : "what is man for?" When we act spontaneously to help a child in need we have not paused for ethical debate. We have acted out of our nature and about that nature we can ask what man appears to be for and observe that man is for others.
Such ethics alters the focus from what I ought to do or be to a focus on the other and this corresponds to our experience of being moved to help a person in need.
Much of our evolutionary success derives from our being co-operative breeders. 'Homo Sapiens' originated out of interconnectiveness. I am a person because of personal relations. These are, of course, assertions but are they not supported by the following adaptation of Hume's observation that when he looked for his identity he only perceived a bundle of perceptions. My social identity is a bundle of perceptions of others and what I believe to be their perceptions of me. My particular society constitutes my social self. I am both of others and for others, both genitive and dative, the object of others possession and a being who is for others. Only to the extent that each of us is a social person, being for others is part of our nature. It is a change from being a noun qualified by virtues and vices to being a verb whose fundamental activity is to be for others.
Our response is not contractual so no limits are set, the extent of commitment is unconditional. Perhaps this is why ethics and Christian morality could not mix. In the New Testament parable of the Judgement the just did not consider their actions had been either right or virtuous. They protested 'Lord when saw we thee naked and clothed thee, hungry and fed thee or in prison and visited thee.' Their response had been natural not intentional, generous not contractual. I cannot read the Good Samaritan parable as saying that everyone is my neighbour as this would logically destroy the meaning of neighbour. Rather, I think it says that those we encounter who are in need we have a responsibility to treat as we would our nearest and dearest neighbour. In circumstances of distress you help the person to whom you owe nothing because he is not your neighbour.
This morality of creativity and being for others is wholly different from traditional ethical viewpoints even though it has perhaps a Christian basis. It is radical but modest in scope. It accepts that most of our interpersonal activities are neither ethical or selfish. They are only in danger of becoming immoral and selfish when a situation arises which brings into play the unconditional consequences of our being for others.
Roger Farnworth