Abstract
The previous chapter has labored toward reconsidering the common morality by focusing on the posture of openness that cultivates a responsibility to, with, and for our fellows. Jacques Ellul and George Grant helped to assess the systems pertaining to the common morality, judging them to have taken on the form and function of a moral technique aimed at rendering efficient the processes of ethical decision-making in biomedical science and practice. Indeed, the previous chapter helped to diagnose the moral milieu in which the common morality has taken shape and effect as being committed to homogeneous moral reasoning, which is to be shared among all persons, in all places–rather, shared among those assessed as being capable of reasoning in such a manner. Moreover, Karl Barth helped to reimagine the practice of bioethics, offering an initial posture that destabilizes technique while introducing the ethical encounter of the “I” and “Thou” as an embodied practice of solidarity, such that the history of correlating human beings is made known as each one listens, hears, and exchanges speech. Gabriel Marcel added to the practice of openness by suggesting that such an encounter requires that we not only present ourselves available before but also faithful to the other. Indeed, availability and fidelity, for Marcel, are critical for the development of authentic relationships.
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Notes
Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 6.
For a brief survey of competing views, see James Stacey Taylor, Practical Autonomy and Bioethics (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 19–20.
Onora O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 23.
Daniel Callahan, “Can the Moral Commons Survive Autonomy?,” Hastings Center Report 26, no. 6 (1996): 41–42.
Daniel Callahan, “Autonomy: A Moral Good Not a Moral Obsession,” Hastings Center Report 14, no. 5 (1984): 40–42.
Paul Root Wolpe, “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise, ed. Raymond DeVries and Janardan Subedi (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1998), p. 43.
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 6th ed., 2009), p. 99.
Bernard Gert, The Moral Rules (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 20.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 39.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: The Floating Press, 2009), p. 23.
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), p. 133.
Jacques Ellul, On Freedom, Love, and Power, trans. William H. Vanderburg (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010), p. 70.
As Brian Brock comments, George Grant, too, reminds us that the “will [has become] the central feature of modern anthropology” (Brock, Christian Ethics, p. 73). Brock continues, “To will announces that we are serious, choosing to actualize ourselves and our view of the world against the one who simply thinks, or impo-tently desires without acting... [Willing intends] to bring into being a good future, by conquering an indifferent nature and making it good for us” (p. 74). For Grant’s original discussions regarding willing the good, see George Grant, “Time as History,” and “English Speaking Justice,” in Collected Works of George Grant, vol. 4, ed. Arthur Davis and Henry Roper (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2009), pp. 3–78
Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G. S. Fraser (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), p. 17
Nicholas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, trans. Natalie Duddington (San Rafael: Semantron Press, 2009), p. 10.
Pam McGrath, “Autonomy, Discourse, and Power: A Postmodern Reflection on Principlism and Bioethics,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 23, no. 5 (1998): 523.
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 25.
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 5.
Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, p. 20; This “herd” element is a synonym for the tyranny of the technological society that conforms moral participants under the rule of moral technique. However, Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, would argue herd morality is a morality of selflessness—it is quite likely, Nietzsche would accuse the posture of openness as being such a morality. Thus, it will be important to clarify how openness and human agency are correlated in this chapter, so as to not fall subject to an equal charge of herd morality. Nevertheless, even for Nietzsche, the claim “herd” morality is relevant here: There remains a dependence upon external authority, pronouncement held within the strata and structure of the common morality, which relieves [if not actively prevents] each one of the need to make one’s own judgments, particularly in opposition to the abstract whole. To read further regarding Nietzsche’s herd mentality, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern, Dover Thrift ed. (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1997).
Bernard Gert, Charles M. Culver, and K. Danner Clouser, Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 2.
CD, p. 593f; Daniel Migliore adds further comment, saying, “[Barth] emphasizes that the appropriate human response to God’s grace (charis) is action born not of duty or fear but of free thanksgiving (eu-charistia )” (Daniele L. Migliore, “Commanding Grace: Karl Barth’s Theological Ethics,” in Commanding Grace: Studies in Karl Barth’s Ethics, ed. Daniele L. Migliore [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010], p. 12).
“This is not to make moral action into a mere reflex; but it is to deny that moral authenticity has its ultimate ground in transcendent moral consciousness, in ‘the self-willed desire of man to know good and evil’” (John Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 56
Gerald McKenny, The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 274.
Paul D. Matheny, Dogmatics and Ethics: The Theological Realism and Ethics of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1990), p. 63.
John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004), p. 109.
John Webster, “God and Conscience,” in The Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics, ed. Michael Banner and Alan Torrance (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), p. 152.
William Stringfellow, Conscience and Obedience: The Politics of Romans 13 and Revelation 13 in Light of the Second Coming (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004), p. 102.
Archibald James Spencer, Clearing a Space for Human Action: Ethical Ontology in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 213.
Referring to a conscience that endures beyond context, and persons imposing its command upon others, C. S. Lewis writes, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience” (C. S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” in God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970], 292).
See the following critiques offered by Gustafson and Hauerwas here: James M. Gustafson, Can Ethics Be Christian? (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1975), p. 160
James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, Ethics and Theology, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 30–32
Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1975), pp. 142
Stanley Hauerwas, “On Honour: By Way of a Comparison of Barth and Trollope,” in Reckoning with Barth, ed. Nigel Biggar (Oxford: Mowbray, 1988), pp. 145–69.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 2: Human Destiny (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), p. 309
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1: Human Nature (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996)
William Werpehowski, “Command and History in the Ethics of Karl Barth,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 9, no. 1 (2001): 301.
David Clough, Ethics in Crisis: Interpreting Barth’s Ethics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 12.
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© 2015 Ashley John Moyse
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Moyse, A.J. (2015). The Isolated Will and the Freedom for Agency. In: Reading Karl Barth, Interrupting Moral Technique, Transforming Biomedical Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137534590_4
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