Ethics and Post-Modernism

I consider myself a post-modernist for the most part, that is, in almost all regards I don’t believe in absolutism or that a metaphysical truth necessarily exists. However I have often faced the difficulty in formulating an ethical theory as part of this. In order to have a moral code one must have a system of value and an appreciation of right and wrong.

It is paradoxical to say that I am a post-modernist and that I have an ethical theory that has any notion of right and wrongness as these ‘truths’ are always relative. So then, can I even say that I have a moral code if I don’t adhere to ideas of good and evil? In a rare case I am going to step away from Nietzsche’s philosophy of ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in which he claims that the goal of humanity will be to reach the Übermensch and that at this point all moral action will be justified as this greater humanity is itself the new system of value. In Nietzsche’s case and my own we can both say that there are no absolute morals, that we each must live and act in a way that expresses our own moral feeling without appealing to a set of principles or doctrine.

Utilitarianism (greatest pleasure for the greatest number) and Kantian ethics (moral absolutism see: Immanuel Kant) both attempt to be universally applicable principles, which in post-modernism is just not possible, furthermore Kant’s method necessitates morals as a metaphysical reality (moral a prior). Kantian absolutism is what society coheres to in general as it makes sense for a collective group to be subject to the same laws and codes as everyone else, however on an individual level each person must hold themselves only as a judge unto themselves.

An alternative view is one of virtue ethics, that one’s character should be held as an embodiment of virtue (Aristotle). To clarify in the same way that I was taught this in school, “Hero ethics” that we should seek to follow in the path of one we deem morally suitable. The issue with choosing a fellow man as an archetype for one’s ethical framework is that in doing so we are making a human infallible, even someone as supposedly virtuous as Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa is not, to use Christian terminology ‘without sin’, everyone has made mistakes and acted immorally by their own principles at some point. Furthermore to make a deity such as Jesus Christ the subject of one’s ethics is to ‘take Jesus out of Jesus’. Most Christians will say that Jesus acted perfectly in his life and within his own context as a 1^st century Jew in Israel, but to take his actions and put them into everyday usage is to remove the man of Jesus of Nazareth and turn him into a dogma in which one can follow absolutely. The biggest issue with these modes of living however is that it removes ability for one to live for themselves and to experience moral action first hand, it builds a wall around oneself and constricts morality to someone else’s law which it forces us to participate in, making one’s moral existence obsolete.

I shall once again draw on another scholar who’s been hugely influential to my personal thinking; Dietrich Bonhoeffer whom coheres to a, somewhat archaic moral code known as Divine Command; that all moral actions are the actions that God wishes us to perform. Bonhoeffer is aware that this ethical theory which was adopted by George Bush and some argue, Adolf Hitler, is hugely limited as we cannot know what this divine command is. Which is where the difference between Bonhoeffer and the former lies, while they and numerous others would claim that they are acting on God’s behalf and using this to exalt themselves to an agent of the divine Bonhoeffer would never claim that he was doing God’s will, the most he believed we could say was that by acting in faith and taking message from the Gospels we can hope that are actions follow God’s will.

Therefore my ethical theory stands somewhere between Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche, I accept that I must act in a way that I deem right, relative to both myself and for others around me, not to a strict form of absolutism or dogma that governs my actions. However unlike Nietzsche I do not claim that by making these actions I am always going to be justified, nor, like Bonhoeffer can I go in faith that a greater power is guiding me to a moral destiny. I must act in a way that allows me to be my own moral agent, unconstrained by doctrine and to be faithful that I am doing what is right, merely by my own judgement and ability to act freely.

To claim that anything is “good” or “evil” is to make myself a judge unto its value. To criticise a person or event as right or wrong is again to make myself into a moral arbiter and thus attempting to raise myself up to a transcendent being, whether God or Super-man. 

“If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cost of Discipleship)