The Ethical Demand

Knud Ejler Løgstrup

Description

Knud Ejler Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand is the most original influential Danish contribution to moral philosophy in this century. This is the first time that the complete text has been available in English translation. Originally published in 1956, it has again become the subject of widespread interest in Europe, now read in the context of the whole of Løgstrup’s work. The Ethical Demand marks a break not only with utilitarianism and with Kantianism but also with Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism and with all forms of subjectivism. Yet Løgstrup’s project is not destructive. Rather, it is a presentation of an alternative understanding of interpersonal life. The ethical demand presupposes that all interaction between human beings involves a basic trust. Its content cannot be derived from any rule. For Løgstrup, there is not Christian morality and secular morality. There is only human morality.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Éthique et morale
• Moral Philosophy
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Morality
• Metaphysics
• Immanuel Kant
• Ethics
• Religion
• Emmanuel Kant

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 février 1997
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268161262
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE ETHICAL DEMAND
REVISIONS
A Series of Books on Ethics
General Editors:
Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre
THE ETHICAL DEMAND
Knud Ejler L gstrup
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame and London
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 1997 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
L gstrup, K. E. (Knud Ejler), 1905-1981.
[Etiske fordring. English]
The ethical demand / Knud Ejler L gstrup.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-00934-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN 10: 0-268-00934-1 (alk. paper)
1. Ethics. I. Title
BJ78.D3L613 1997
170-dc20 96-26430
CIP
ISBN 9780268161262
This book is printed on acid-free paper .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
Introduction , Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans Fink
Introduction
1. Concerning the attempt to give a definition in strictly human terms of the relationship to the other person which is contained within the religious proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth
2. One presupposition of the view that-according to the proclamation of Jesus-it is in relationship to our neighbor that the relationship to God is determined
3. Methodological remarks
1. The Fact Which Is the Source of the Silent Demand
1. The trust which, on a basic understanding, belongs to human existence
2. The demand that grows out of the trust which in a basic and all-encompassing understanding belongs to our human life
3. The twofold function of conventional forms
4. The demand is unspoken. It is not expressed by the other person
5. Does demand encourage encroachment?
2. Mediation
1. The question of mediation illustrated by an analysis of the concept of love in the works of D. H. Lawrence
2. Objective and personal mediation
3. The Radical Character of the Demand and the Social Norms
1. The demand is radical
2. Mistaking the radical character for limitlessness
3. The protection afforded by legal, moral, and conventional regulations
4. The radical demand is unspoken. It is not expressed in social norms
5. The guidance of the social norms
6. The inadequate guidance of the social norms
4. The Changing Character of the Social Norms
1. Need, claim, and form
2. Eros and ethos
3. The changing character of the social norms illustrated by changes in the view taken of love
4. The inner contradiction in our view of the relationship between the sexes
5. The changing character of social norms illustrated by changes in views of power, wealth, and equality
6. The changing character of social norms illustrated by the process of secularization
7. Is our knowledge of their relativity a threat to the social norms?
5. Is There a Christian Ethics?
1. Our relation to the radical demand is invisible
2. Is there a Christian ethics?
6. Opposition to the One-sided Demand
1. The protest in the name of reciprocity
2. The understanding of life and the one-sided demand
3. Controlling existence by way of theories
4. The protest in the name of suffering and death
7. Is the Ethical Demand Destructive on Account of Its Radical Character?
1. The two components of the ethical demand
2. Is a claim for reciprocity characteristic of natural love in a way which sets it in opposition to the one-sided demand?
3. The false assertion that loneliness is a curse
4. The inadequacy of natural love in the relationships which it itself helped to create
5. The destructive demand
6. The wickedness of human beings and the goodness of life
7. The difference between natural love and love of neighbor
8. Making Compromises with the Demand
1. Making compromises with the demand
2. The sharpened contradiction
9. The Ethical Decision
1. Decision and resolution
2. Failing camouflaged as a conflict of duties
3. Preoccupation with motives is paralyzing
4. The decision s hold upon us
5. The critical and the normal situation
10. Science and Ethics
1. The ultimate authority in the demand
2. Is it possible within the framework of a nonmetaphysical philosophy to speak of an unfulfillable demand?
3. The attitudes of the sciences to the assumptions of every demand
4. The morality of intellectualism and of responsibility
5. The conflict over the interpretation of determination
6. The interpretation of the scientific reduction
11. Poetry and Ethics
1. Poetic and ethical understanding of life
I
II
12. The Unfulfillability of the Demand and the Proclamation of Jesus
1. The authority with which Jesus spoke
2. The source of authority with which Jesus spoke
3. The difference between the attitudes to the mission and the proclamation of Jesus in his own time and ours
4. Trust and interpretation
13. Polemical Epilogue
1. Settling accounts with Kierkegaard s Works of Love
I
An account of the leading ideas in Kierkegaard s Works of Love
Kierkegaard s definition of passionate love in Works of Love
Kierkegaard s definition of love of one s neighbor in Works of Love
II
Settling accounts with Kierkegaard s Works of Love
2. Kierkegaard s unwillingness to distinguish between the essence of natural love and its selfish form
3. The problem of Pietism in Kierkegaard
4. Olesen Larsen ignores the empirical fact which is the source of the demand
5. The philosophy and theology influenced by Kierkegaard ignore the understanding of life contained in the ethical demand
6. Cognition and existence
I
II
III
Appendix Ethics and Ontology
Teleological, Deontological, and Ontological Ethics
I
Teleological ethics, based on psychological desires and logical linguistics
The teleological conception reduces the world to conditions of following our ends
Ethics and the world view of art
The ethical aspect is an opposing light
An exaggeration of the role that reflection plays for moral rules
The singularity of an ethical situation and the universality of the moral rule
The argument between ontological and teleological ethics, illustrated by the relation between three factors: an interpretation of natural language, subjective world view, and scientific knowledge
II
Does duty mean too little in teleological ethics and too much in deontological ethics?
Kierkegaard s deontological ethics
Knowledge and exsitence
Command or demand
Positivism and existentialism
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to acknowledge the permissions that we have received which made this book possible and to express our thanks to those who gave us these permissions: first to Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag A. S., Copenhagen, Danish publishers of Den Etiske Fordring , and present holders of the rights in the English translation of the first twelve chapters published by Fortress Press of Philadelphia in 1971 (we are also grateful to Fortress Press for their helpfulness); secondly to the editors and publishers of Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche for permission to publish a translation of Ethik und Ontologie, originally published in that journal (57, 3: 357-91); and thirdly and most of all to Fru Rosemarie L gstrup, life companion and translator of K. E. L gstrup, whose permission, encouragement and assistance we greatly appreciate. We also wish to express our gratitude to the L gstrup Archives of the University of Aarhus and to the Aarhus University Research Foundation, which provided support for the translation.
Hans Fink
Alasdair MacIntyre
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
The translator from the Danish of the Introduction and of the first twelve chapters-it was first published in English in 1971-was Theodor I. Jensen. The thirteenth chapter, which was omitted from the 1971 volume, was translated from the Danish by Gary Puckering. The article Ethik und Ontologie from Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche in 1960 was translated from L gstrup s German by Eric Watkins. We are greatly indebted to all of them for the excellence of their work, especially to Mr. Jensen for the pathbreaking character of his presentation of L gstrup s not always easily translatable prose style.
All three translations have been revised by us in the following ways: (i) we have tried to secure uniformity between the three translations; (ii) where there is already some established usage in English in some relevant philosophical or theological context, we have made the translations conform to that usage; (iii) wherever in one of the translations a gender inclusive his was used, we have in most places substituted his or her (we are aware that our choice of a convention here is clumsy and to some degree arbitrary); (iv) we have translated the headings of sections as they are in the original, instead of using the headings sometimes substituted in the 1971 version; and (v) we have, mostly in small ways, revised in the interests of clarity and accuracy.
Hans Fink
Alasdair MacIntyre
INTRODUCTION
The Ethical Demand by K. E. L gstrup is certainly the most original and influential Danish contribution to moral philosophy in this century. Published in 1956 by a theologian who claimed to be arguing in purely philosophical terms, it immediately attracted the attention of a surprisingly broad public, including politicians, artists and academics from many disciplines and it has remained a central point of reference for the discussion of ethics in Denmark and Scandinavia ever since. It was translated into German in 1959 and into English in 1971. In the last decade it has again become the subject of broad interest, now read in the context of the whole of L gstrup s work, much of which was published only after his death in 1981. In the ongoing debates about the possib