משבר ואמונה, אובדן האגו, ג. המוסר החדשCrisis and Faith, I Ego Loss, 3 The New Morality
א׳
1The New Morality or, as it is also called, Situation Ethics, ostensibly appeared on the contemporary scene as a protest and an alternative to the established value system of the West, which, justifiably, was found wanting. The New Morality raised some valid questions and recognized serious problems arising within the accepted value standards of Western civilization. Yet, its solutions are in themselves another manifestation of the collapse of values and meaning, and if it does not seek ego loss, it certainly reduces the status of man.
ב׳
2At least by the theoretical acceptance, if not by very consistent practice, the ethics of Western civilization were based on universal principles. There was the Decalogue, ethics based on reason, on Nature, on duty, the categorical imperative; there were entire ethical systems claiming universal validity. The New Morality refers to these as “code ethics,” legalism. They all prescribe in advance what human behavior ought to be in a given situation. They do this on the basis of what they consider to be universally valid principles from which they deduce rules of conduct. Code ethics yields deductive morality.
ג׳
3It is relatively easy to say what the New Morality does not want. It rejects code ethics, ethics of universal principles. What then does it affirm? It is rightly called situation ethics. One of its leading proponents gives the following illustrative example. One day, before an election, while travelling in a cab, he asked the driver how he was going to vote. The driver’s reply was that in his family they had always voted the straight Republican ticket, but this time, “No!—there are times when a man has to push his principles aside and do the right thing.” The incident is quoted to illustrate the idea that right and wrong cannot be legislated in advance. One has to make the choice when the moment of decision arrives. On what basis does one make situational decisions? There is one, and only one, fundamental principle that the New Morality recognizes, namely the principle of love. However, no rules and no laws may determine in advance what love requires.
ד׳
4A critique of the New Morality summed it up in the following words:
ה׳
5“…it seems that we have reached a point at which the whole ambitious structure of moral theology is revealed as a complete futility. Every man must decide for himself according to his own estimate of conditions and consequences; and no-one can decide for him or impugn the decision to which he comes. Perhaps this is the end of the matter after all.” To which Bishop Fletcher, a prophet of the New Morality, adds: “This is precisely what this book is intended to show.”8Situation Ethics, The New Morality, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1966, p. 37. In other words, situation ethics maintains that anything and everything may be right or wrong. It all depends on the situation.
ו׳
6One is entitled to say that situation ethics has quite a distinguished ancestry. Its form of subjectivism, of utmost personal involvement in decision making, has been deeply influenced by existentialism. Kierkegaard insisted that truth was subjectivity. In a sense, one may say that certain aspects of Buber’s teaching must have influenced the New Morality. While Buber would maintain that he was not an antinomian, he considered himself an anomian. Like the new moralists, he had no use for code ethics either. According to him, revelation had no contents. God speaks to man from each concrete situation, challenging him to respond without giving any indication how he should respond. Man alone must choose between the numerous possibilities in each situation. He responds through the deed upon which he decides. One might see in Sartre another one of the forerunners of this kind of ethics. In his essay, Existentialism as a Humanism, Sartre tells the story of a young man who came to consult him during the Nazi occupation in France. He was in a dilemma. On the one hand, as a young Frenchman, he felt that it was his duty to escape to England to join the Free French. On the other hand, leaving France would mean abandoning his old mother whose only support he was. How was he to decide, not between a right and a wrong, but between two rights? There was no ethical law to prescribe conduct in that situation. The case is used to illustrate the point that code ethics does not work in a real situation. One can make decisions only in the light of the prevailing situation which, according to Sartre, is always unique and not repeatable.
ז׳
7When Fletcher’s book, Situation Ethics, the New Morality, came out with his suggestion that the only principle to guide human behavior is love and in each situation one should consider anew only what the command of love is, one reviewer commented that this “…is quite a long thought for an eighteen-year-old, during a passionate moment, in the back seat of a car.” This is very much to the point. What is proposed by the New Morality is indeed “quite a long thought,” not only for an eighteen-year-old but for every human being. To figure out in each situation, independently of any rule or law, as well as of any previous experience, whether personal or vicarious, what love requires, is easier said than done. Let us see what this means in actual practice. Fletcher puts it this way: “Is adultery wrong?…I don’t know. Maybe. Give me a case. Describe a real situation.” This applies to all questions of morality and ethics. Fletcher continues: “Or perhaps somebody will ask if a man should ever lie to his wife, or desert his family, or spy on a business rival’s design or market plans, or fail to report some income item in his tax return. Again the answer cannot be an answer, it can only be another question…. Have you a real question, a concrete situation?”9Ibid., 142-3.
ח׳
8It is important to appreciate the full implications of such a position. The sanctity of the word does not exist as a principle; a promise, a vow—by itself—has no value; family obligations are ethically neutral or rather non-existent. No-one can obligate himself with regard to a future situation. Honesty as such is neither an ideal nor a valid principle of action. There is only love. But now think of the real man, the human being as he exists in reality; consider his failings and shortcomings, his egocentricity, his innate bent to rationalize. If you now tell this man: there are no prescriptive rules of behavior, a word may be broken, family ties do not bind, honesty is a mere sound—all you have to do is love, and you send him with this kind of preparation into life, will he be able to act in accordance with unselfish love? The irony of situation ethics is that while it pays so much attention to every single situation, it disregards the fundamental human situation, man’s inadequacy, his failings and foolishness. Tell this man (not the non-existent ideal one, but the one whom we know in actual fact, in the actual situation) that all moral discipline, all principled behavior, all rules, are worthless, and release him into each one of his situations with the sole command of love—you may be sure he will behave like a bull in a china shop. The end result for any society must be chaos.
ט׳
9However, not only the failings to which human nature is prone, but even more so, the complexities of most situations, render the New Morality questionable. Consider the case of the young Frenchman who sought Sartre’s advice in that situation of conflict of duties between the call of France and the claim of his mother. How is love to decide between two commandments of love? How can the choice be made, if all principles that might give guidance are rejected and one leaves the decision, without any advanced teaching, to the spontaneity of the moment? Obviously, the young man was in a situational predicament and turned to the authority he recognized in Sartre.
י׳
10Bishop Pike wrote a book on case histories treated by the New Morality. The situation in one of his cases was that the wife was an alcoholic. Since normal married life was hardly possible, ergo the liaison between the husband and another woman could be justified in the name of love. Well, it is not that simple. What about one’s love responsibility toward the sick wife? How are the two claims, the need of the wife and that of the husband, to be weighed against each other? And can the husband alone, obeying the command of love as he understands it, do the weighing? Most people are unlikely to see their situation as it is in truth; a detached outsider might be much better equipped to do the evaluation. The one who is involved and is to make the decision in complete independence and in situational spontaneity has only a subjective view that is often distorted by his own bias and his usually rationalized self-seeking. Given human nature and the complexities of the human situation, it is essential to send the human being into the situation of decision making well-prepared by a sound appreciation of the values of human existence, of ethical principles for guiding human conduct, and of the practice of self-restraint and discipline.
י״א
11There are, of course, exceptional situations. However, the only hope for the morally right deed in the exceptional case lies in the acknowledgement of universal values and principles that are affirmed and proved by the exception. In a book on the Maquis, Alexander Miller discusses the moral problems with which the underground fighters were confronted in France. Was it permissible for them to forge, to steal, to kill? The response was, “Yes, everything is permitted—and everything is forbidden.”10Alexander Miller, The Renewal of Man, pp. 99-100. What did he mean? The very asking of the question and the recognition that everything was forbidden meant that the maquis were aware of “code ethics” as a rule, and acknowledged it. But this was an exceptional situation. There were vast and often overwhelming issues and considerations involved. There was no other way to meet those higher considerations than by breaking the rule. One knew that one broke a rule; it was with the necessary sense of the tragic, in a situation of great moral tension, after a great deal of heart-searching. Thus the Maquis. From the angle of the New Morality one would look at it differently. An action as such is neither permitted nor forbidden, only the situation determines right or wrong. When the Maquis kill, there is no confrontation with conscience. There is no advance ruling that ‘thou shalt not kill,’ to which a serious measure of consideration is due. The situation rules ab novo and spontaneously, thou shalt kill. One prefers the attitude of the underground fighter who realized that what he was doing was a tragic necessity. It is this sense of the tragic, that originates in the confrontation between a conscience and an objectively valid norm, which alone lends moral dignity to the deed. It is the only extant safeguard against the inadequacies of human nature. If at times it becomes unavoidable to take a life, woe unto man if he does it without realizing that the rule is thou shalt not kill, and fails to try to justify his action in the searching and accusing light of that rule. Only the full realization of what ought to be, the heart-searching confrontation with the principle, will—where nothing else is meaningfully possible—lend the quality and the dignity of the moral and the right to the breaking of the universal principle.
י״ב
12In truth, the New Morality itself is a symptom of the collapse of standards and of the spiritual exhaustion of Western civilization that we have analyzed. The tablets of the law are shattered and there is nothing left but love. Love is, of course, a noble ideal. Unfortunately, man is not yet ready to be able to base on it either his own life or the structure of human society.
י״ג
13However, the other aspect of our earlier discussion, man’s loss of metaphysical status and disintegration of personal authenticity, is also manifest in situation ethics. There is a logical fallacy at the very core of this kind of ethics. The New Morality not only asserts that general principles are of no use for ethical behavior, but, by implication, it assumes that man may free himself from such principles, from the acceptance of universally valid and commanding guidelines for human conduct.
י״ד
14The New Morality does acknowledge at least one supreme principle, that of love, and universalizes it. But why is it binding? That man is capable of love does not obligate him to love. Is it because it is the best that man can practice and that can happen to him as an individual and society? In other words, one accepts another principle of some “code ethics” as a universal law above love, i.e., act so that you do the best. But what is the best? How is it determined? Shall we say, the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism! A Christian might say that love is the supreme principle because it is Jesus’ message to the world. But then another principle supervenes—that of faith in Jesus. It will be the principle of faith that prescribes the law, the law of love.
ט״ו
15We have to probe deeper. Situation ethics maintains that every situation is essentially different from every other situation. Every situation is new; it is unique, not repeatable. Therefore, past experience is worthless. This makes sense on the assumption of another principle, that of the incoherence of all situations. The principle of incoherence is universalized; it demands that one decide spontaneously in each situation. This too would yield the categorical imperative of a “code ethics.” Act so that the maxims of your action are always spontaneous. But on what grounds is the principle of incoherence affirmed? True, every human situation is unique. Yet one might recognize a bond of continuity between the situation supplied by the personal continuity of the one acting in a unique situation. The “unique” situation does not stand in isolation but has its place in the connected structure of personal history. It may therefore not be altogether pointless to allow past experience to have a word to say in the decision of each new situation. Furthermore, if there should be some coherence, not only between the situations of each individual, but also between the situations in the life of one person and in those of another, or some measure of similarity and relatedness—as surely there is—between the situations through which one generation of men passes and another, then, of course, the logical thing is to let past experience of other people and other generations inform one’s “spontaneous” decision in each new situation. The principle of incoherence is an essential affirmation of the New Morality. On what is it based? Surely not on the principle of love. It may very well be that if one should accept coherence, the demands of love would be rather different than if one assumes incoherence.
ט״ז
16What is most important, however, is to realize that in order to know what the demand of love is, one must have some idea of what man in the general sense is. One loves a human being differently from the way one loves a plant or an animal. Before one may know how to act with love towards a fellow human being, one must first answer the question, what is man? If man is judged to be nothing but a kind of higher animal, then to love him would mean mainly to satisfy his biological needs and love between sexes would require only that they service each other in the most efficient manner. Once we accept certain universal principles as to the nature of man, general rules are bound to follow. If man is not a mere animal, but a person with a continuous identity and with a conscience, his commitments will have to be enduring and his responsibility will reach beyond the present situation. Prescriptive ethics will play an important part in his life. Fletcher’s question—is adultery wrong?—might also be asked in a different form. One might ask: is murder right? The New Morality would have to give the same reply as in the case of adultery: “Maybe, it depends. Describe a real situation.” Quite clearly, a statement of this kind implies a preconception concerning the value of human life, i.e. that its value is relative, relative to each given situation. Only because one subscribes to the universal principle that life is not holy in itself, can one maintain that murder is a neutral act. Whether it be right or wrong depends on the situation. From this point of view of the New Morality, Himmler’s statement to the S.S. leadership, that we quoted above, would still be right. There is no reason at all why in a certain situation one may not deem an entire people to be nothing better than a parasitic infection on the body of human society, and proceed with enthusiasm to its extermination as an act of love towards mankind. In other words, the new moralist does not face the situation without advance rule and guidance. Situation ethics in the case of the taking of a life may function as it pretends to because it adopts the principle of the relativity of the value of life. This too is deductive ethics; it is code ethics. He who declares, “Thou shalt not kill,” rules differently, because he judges the value of life by a different standard.
י״ז
17The attitude that adultery may be right or wrong according to the situation is not based on a given situation, but is determined by the adoption of an evaluation of marriage in principle and in universal terms prior to any situation. It implies a ruling about the nature of marriage which, like any other code ethics, prescribes the “spontaneous” decision in each situation. Fletcher gives us his evaluation of marriage in principle, observing that “the triple terrors of conception, infection, and detection, which once scared people into ‘Christian’ relations (marital monopoly), have pretty well become obsolete through medicine and urbanism.”11Situation Ethics, etc., p. 80. Quite clearly this kind of situation ethics is deductive like any other form of ethics. It is deduced from Fletcher’s understanding of the nature of marriage. If indeed marriage is nothing else but a “triple terror” that has lost the sceptre which it once held over the frightened female section of mankind, then, of course, the rights or wrongs of adultery depend on medical technology and the progress of urbanization. One should, however, realize that with this view of marriage one is involved in universal principles, for with it one has made a declaration about man and woman, their relationship to each other, and their place in the scheme of things. It is then the principle that gives guidance to the decision that might be reached in the concrete situation. The principle prescribes the rule which demands that what once was an absolute value should be now treated as one relative to each situation. Should one have a different opinion about what man and woman are, should one believe that they find the highest fulfillment of their relationship in a covenant that is meant to endure all through life in the presence of God, that therefore this relationship is to be sanctified, the guidance provided by such an evaluation of marriage on principle would, of course, be rather different.
י״ח
18Whether we realize it or not, we never get away from principles, advance rules, prescriptive laws. The New Morality is a desperate attempt to give some respectability to the everyone-doing-his-own-thing type of life style of a bankrupt civilization. While its spontaneous situational decisions are the symptom of the dissolution of values, the implied general principles on which it stands are—in the main—a reflection of man’s reduced status in the scheme of things. The principle of incoherence is another version of man’s alienation from the world around him as well as from himself. The reduction of the value of life to each situation is the result of the loss of his metaphysical dignity as a person, his reduction to “thinghood;” only things have value relative to the situation. Of course, there is always the panacea of love. But what is love, if man lives in the river of forever incoherent situations, if he is reduced to the level of “thinghood?” If left to the spontaneity of the situation, love is overwhelmed by the biologically impersonal in man; it is defeated by the forces that drive man, rather than guided by the values willed by man in personal authenticity.