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7Раздел I. ФИЛОСОФИЯ
УДК 17.026
HOW THE ETHICS FOR THE PRESENT AGE IS POSSIBLE
A. Ule
Ljubljana, Slovenia
The subject of this paper is how one is to act in the present age, when there are no solid grounds left for moral reflections and choices. I am referring here to Kierkegaard's reflections on the «Present Age» that for Kierkegaard is essentially different from the «Age of Revolution». Particularly important is Kierkegaard's criticism of the media as the main supporters of the universal «levelling» of people, that is, making them neglect their of character and true virtuosity, and the public as engaging in generalized envy. This criticism can be transferred to the modern age of digital media. We need to find a different angle to approach the problems that would reach beyond subjectivism, objectivism and inter-subjectivism in this context. In this paper I propose the opening of the individual to inter-beingness; that is, the relational conception of an individual's existence. This involves becoming aware of the sensorily present and spiritual co-belongingness that encourages active compassion and love.
Keywords: ethical existence, levelling, inter-beingness, active compassion, ethos.
The very acute moral and philosophical question today is the following: how are we to act in an age when the numerous grounds on which we have so far based our reflections, and in particular our lives' principles, are being pulled out from under our feet? We can no longer rely on morals and tradition, on religions and ideologies, on social roles, on knowledge and information. At the same time, we have at our disposal a multitude of choices, both of all kinds of goods as well as all kinds of viewpoints, truths with both upper- and lowercase letters, lifestyles and forms of socialising. Therefore, how do we
© Ule A., 2017
choose between these different offers, if there are no firm bases or principles against which to make decisions?
Somebody would say: we have to find a new global ethics and to motivate at least the reasoned people to follow this ethics. However, ethics seems to need grounding in something that radically transcends the contingent existence of empirical human individuals. It needs grounding, because moral norms and ethical ideals are unconditional demands. Ethics cannot be found anywhere in empirical nature and human culture as an empirical fact. Ethical demands cannot be derived from any facts, as G.E. Moore attempted to prove in his critique of the so-called naturalistic fallacy [6].
As soon as we state a moral law, rule or principle as a reason for acting in one way rather than another, these reasons seem to lose their moral nature or simply become morally irrelevant. Yet, it is by classifying the respect for moral demands among the reasons for our actions that we classify them in the «competitive» game of other reasons, including non-moral or morally neutral ones that could bring the same person to perform the same act (i.e., offer shelter). It is the very classification of moral reasons in the same line as other possible reasons for the same action that takes away from the former seemingly a priori moral glow.
The more we try to ground ethics in some transcendence that is not in itself explicitly ethical, the less remains of ethics as such. Absolutely grounded ethics - as ethics - thus vanishes! It perhaps becomes part of a metaphysics or theology, or, in any case, a metaphysical or a priori doctrine. However, it disappears as active ethics, that is, an ethics that addresses us and motivates us to work towards the Good and to lead a responsible life. Anybody that looks for the grounding of ethics in the absolute, and feels that even this is not enough becomes unwittingly caught up in this paradox. But what is the something «more» than this grounding is only vaguely shown.
Soren Kierkegaard in Either/Or writes that moral decisions primarily lean on the fundamental decision to accept ethical existence, and less on our deciding for good rather than evil [2, p. 180]. Similarly, the appropriation of Christianity is primarily the acceptance of the Christian way of existence, that is, the radical inwardness of the individual in the paradoxical relationship with the all-transcendental absolute. «The decision rests in the subject; the appropriation is the 17
paradoxical inwardness that differs specifically from all other inwardness. Being a Christian is defined not by the "what" of Christianity but by the "how" of the Christian. This "how" can go with only one thing, the absolute paradox» [2, p. 514]. It follows that decision for ethical (or even for religious) existence doesn't lie on any «good» or «final» reasons but on trans-rational, even paradoxical relationship with the all-transcendental absolute.
Soren Kierkegaard was among the first who pointed to the widespread weakness and unwillingness of «modern» people for any kind of the ethical (or religious) engagement.
In one of his early essays, «Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age» from 1846, in which he reviewed the novel Two Ages by a Danish writer, he spoke of what he considered to be the devastating spirit of the «post-revolutionary» age. In Kierkegaard's description of this time we can recognise our own era. Even more, I think that despite the civilizational and historical progress we have seen in the years since, our present situation is even more difficult.
Kierkegaard sharply contrasted what he called «the age of revolution» with «the age of reflection». In his view, the age of revolution was an age of passions that overwhelmed every form of control, and one when reflection was followed by action. Kierkegaard further illustrates some key characteristics of the age of revolution, as follows: «The age of revolution is essentially passionate and therefore it has form, ... has culture, ... has a concept of propriety, ... is an immediacy of reaction, ... is revelation [of energy], ... has not nullified the principle of contradiction and can become either good or evil» [3, pp. 61-68].
Against this time Kierkegaard contrasts the characteristics of the «present age», that is, the post-revolutionary age. This is the age of reflection that, in his view, is a time without passion. It is a time when reflection is not followed by action, but by withdrawal to private illusions or pure passivity. According to Kierkegaard, the present age is a time of reflection, one lacking passion which only flares up in shallow and passing enthusiasms that end in indifference. It is the time of publicity or the public.
«The present age is essentially a sensible, reflecting age, devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial, short-lived enthusiasm and pru-dentially relaxing in indolence» [3, p. 69]. «In contrast to the age of
revolution, which took action, the present age is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements: nothing happens but still there is instant publicity» [3, p. 70].
In his typical ironic and sarcastic mode, Kierkegaard well illustrated the essence of this matter; that is, the general lack of true passion and willingness to engage in acts of personal and social transformation, with such moves being substituted by virtuous reflection without personal involvement. In his essay Kierkegaard notes that in the «present age» only money has value, saying - as if one were reading Marx - that money is just an abstraction, a form of (empty) reflection:
Further on Kierkegaard proposes that even an unobligative reflection is a form of envy, and one that is usually based on envying those who possess a true distinction. Similarly, a general lack of character is seen as a form of envy. This general envy then leads to a general «levelling» of people that opposes every distinction and passion. Like money, the tendency towards levelling is also an abstraction supported by empty reflection, and mainly, in Kierkegaard's view, the Press:
«For levelling really to take place, a phantom must first be raised, the spirit of levelling, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage - and this phantom is the public. Only in a passionless but reflective age can this phantom develop with the aid of the press, when the press itself becomes a phantom» [3, p. 90].
«Only when there is no strong communal life to give substance to the concretion will the press create this abstraction "the public", made up of unsubstantial individuals who are never united or never can be united in the simultaneity of any situation or organization and yet are claimed to be a whole» [3, p. 91].
Regardless of Kierkegaard's «aristocratic» rejection and belittle-ment of the mass social movement for the democratisation of Danish society, and regardless of his potential feelings of offense for the mean-spirited attacks on him in the press (as seen in the Corsair affair), his words on the increasing loss of personal involvement and the growth of anonymity due to the growing power of the media still resound as a serious warning. Indeed, his remarks about the role the media play in the process of levelling people have only grown more 19
valid in our own time, with the digital media rather than its classical printed forms now being the main player here. This has already been pointed out by Hubert Dreyfus in his essay «Kierkegaard on the Internet» [1], where he writes about the dangers of anonymous gossip and its spread online, in messages without substance that are written by irresponsible authors.
Although we can learn something from the new information technologies that now dominate our lives, at the same time they are tempting us to mistake real life for its simulations. Kierkegaard also warned us of this trap, when he claimed that the «present age» transforms the real task into an unreal trick, and reality into a play. In such circumstances life's existential tasks lose value, and we also lose the related opportunities for inner growth which can help our decisions to ripen and mature.
Kierkegaard wrote almost prophetically about how the spreading of new media and means of communication can promote the alienated reflexivity and levelling of individuals:
«Suppose that such an age has invented the swiftest means of transportation and communication, has unlimited combined financial resources: how ironic that the velocity of the transportation system and the speed of communication stand in an inverse relationship to the dilatoriness of irresolution. The shrewd superiority that boasts of not letting itself be carried away (which generally may be all right if one is sitting in a swamp) is a rather plebeian invention» [3, p. 74].
The power of the media pulls us in to ever new turns of reflection and existential indecision, while forcing upon us the illusory impression of our own power and importance. This is why for Kierkegaard the power of the media is even more dangerous than levelling, as it misleads people into existential inauthenticity.
Despite the sharp and rather pessimistic estimation of the «present age» in his essay on the «two ages» Kierkegaard also briefly mentions the possibility of finding a way out of this situation. He sees a way out in authentic socializing, in taking common action without «levelling». In his view this is what took place in the revolutionary age, when members of the revolutionary groups strived passionately for a common cause: «When individuals (each one individually) are essentially and passionately related to an idea and together are essentially related to the same idea, the relation is optimal and normative» [3, p. 62].
However, Kierkegaard did not elaborate any further on this idea of existentially authentic socializing, and thus it remained only a vague suggestion. While this kind of sociality could help people to resist today's alienating processes and systems, the basic problem is that authentic socializing first presumes that each individual will adopt a consequent ethical attitude to the world. Today, when we are constantly watched by countless thousands of eyes of Argus, such individual ethical attitudes are very demanding to maintain at all times.
Moreover, I think that the assumption as such of a consequent ethical attitude among individuals is illusory, because people as individuals cannot be consequently ethical. They can only be ethical within a relationship, in which they are building their ethical awareness together with other people. It seems that the general crisis of subjectivity in the modern age has seriously problematised the concept of the autonomous human individual, and leads us to assume that perhaps such a being has no «ontological potentials» no truth which would be his or hers alone.
Humans are made of three basic kinds of relationships: those with oneself, others and nature. I speak here about human «relational nature» or «relationality». No one type of relationship, nor all types together, are a closed totality, but instead they represent the potential for how it is possible to be a human. According to this assumption there is no higher truth or reality beyond the relational being. This, in my opinion, is the non-transcendable horizon of humanness. I also do not see any need to «prolong» the relationships among people, or between people and nature, towards any central point that would exist in the whole network of relationships, in order to give meaning and being to all other points.
I feel close to a Buddhist theory of self-lessness or the emptiness of all being, which means complete co-dependence (pratitya-samutpada). According to this conception the world is a kind of network of relations, in which all beings are interconnected and intertwined. We can therefore only say: «This was because that was, this arose because that arose, this was not because that was not, this passed away because that passed away» [7, pp. 283-284]. The Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh thus speaks of «inter-beingness».
I see a similarity between the idea of inter-beingness and the phe-nomenological idea of «flesh» in Merleau-Ponty. For him, flesh is the essential inter-relational reality that transcends the subject-object relationship, i. e. the positions of subjectivism, objectivism and even the phenomenological inter-subjectivism. In the flesh «the seer and the visible reciprocate one another and we no longer know which sees and which is seen» [5, p. 139]. This relationship is not one between opposed beings/substances; rather, it is a relationship within being. The truth of beings lies neither in themselves nor in the others, but in their communion; more exactly, beings exist with-and-through each other. Therefore, what is also at stake in Merleau-Ponty is the play among the relationships of inter-bodyness, inter-subjectivity and inter-activity. For him, people are not opposed to each other, but are open in ourselves to others. However, others are not our «complements», in some way helping us make a more real totality. If we go deeper into the universal connectedness and co-dependence of people (and all living beings), we can realise that human freedom mainly lies in our capability to take on, of our own free will, our share of responsibility for this network of co-dependence, which we can also call the «fundamental compassion» in relation to other people, and all living beings with which we share the planet.
From the perspective of inter-beingness, the question of if and how we can transcend the present situation of mass levelling, as identified by Kierkegaard, reveals itself differently and seems to have a more positive resolution than Kierkegaard thought. To this end, I think that we should become more aware of our ability to be mutually sensibly present rather than focusing only our spiritual co-belongingness. The concept of fundamental compassion can be expressed in several ways, such as in paying unbiased attention to people, practicing active altruism, being more sensitive to the quality of relationships and constantly working to overcome any negative relations, and thus trying to achieve greater co-operation between people.
I believe that most people have and respect a certain amount of basic compassion, although this finds its limit in various forms of egoism and instrumental views of other people. It is this very mixture of limited compassion, egoism and instrumentalism that quickly yields to modern forms of levelling, and particularly to the domina-
tion of a superficial attitude towards life, with carelessness to oneself and indifference to others.
To nurture the higher forms of basic compassion it is most important to develop the ability to give unbiased attention to others, which is free egoism, the need for safety and blind attachment to the object of attention. Compassion built on unbiased attention is similar to the Buddhist ideal of active, but self-less compassion (karuna). This is also true for the Christian concept of love, but only if it is undertaken consistently; that is, by perceiving others in their core as actually are being ourselves, and ourselves as actually in our core being others.
Kierkegaard writes much about the Christian confession of love (e.g. in his Works of Love), believing that this commandment mainly concerns a person's renouncement of themselves and the annulment of any differences with others [4, p. 215]. However, basic compassion does not grow from the renouncement of oneself because of others, but from deeply understanding the concept of relationality. Basic compassion understands and accepts the relational selflessness of all people and living beings, and still considers them worthy of all the attention and help they require.
Building one's basic compassion towards others is not a matter that should only concern us as individuals, but it should also be extended to include other people via the medium of actual interpersonal relationships, not simply virtual relationships or ideas that exist only in the mind. An individual who expresses basic compassion is inadvertently inducing a similar orientation in other relationships, if only those involved in such relationships are sensitive enough to recognise the qualities of compassion. I thus believe that individuals and groups that nurture basic compassion become active catalysts of wider and deeper transformations in the ways we have of experiencing and understanding humans and the world. That is, transformations that reveal the illusory nature of the empty promises of freedom that we see in our modern, media-constructed society and that will not be deceived by the consumer-constructed needs for narcissistic self-adoration and greed, or envy and indifference to others. Of course, the existence of individuals with a developed basic compassion is not a sufficient condition for the occurrence of wide and deep social and cultural transformations. Perhaps what we can instead ex-
pect is a renewal of the «Revolutionary Age» that Kierkegaard missed so much.
A further insight from this situation is that we need to differentiate between ethos, as a domain of responsible being, and ethics, as a domain of moral principles, norms and ideals. While the former encompasses the latter, the reverse does not necessarily apply. People need deep awareness about their own, as well as the broader social responsibility, for their actions. We should strive to achieve this in order to become more attentive to what we actually do, and all that we participate in, and either give or renounce support, as needed, as today or tomorrow such actions may have heavy consequences for ourselves and others. This is a direction that supports the distinction between the human ethos and its verbal expression in various moral, ethical or legal concepts and doctrines. At the level of ethos, we can better and more deeply understand what responsible decision making and acting are, and act accordingly, even though it may seem «wrong» from the perspective of conventional (confessional or non-confessional) morality.
Here again, traditional confessions seem to be more of an obstacle than they are of assistance. Yet the alternatives are often equally controversial. The paradox of the grounding of ethics is not resolved, but first rather deepened to the «point» at which we repeatedly run against the wall of remaining on our own with our consciences, facing decisions that will perhaps grind us down. We are feeling our way in the dark, trying to find levers that could help us open the door to see what is behind it and where we could go. In as much as we remain faithful to the ethos, we also confirm our original humanicity, and we do so beyond all religious, political and humanist concepts of the human being. However, the paradox of the grounding of ethics may later disappear, if instead of the need to ground ethics we become aware of the need for a deep awareness about our humanly responsible being or for rooting of our actions and thinking in ethos.
References
1. Dreyfus H. Kierkegaard on the Internet: Anonymity vs. commitment in the Present Age. 2000. URL: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/ html/paper_kierkegaard.html (accessed: 01.10.2017).
2. Kierkegaard S. Either/Or. Vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1987. 528 p.
3. Kierkegaard S. Two Ages. A Literary Review / transl. by H. Hong, E. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1978. 208 p.
4. Kierkegaard S. Works of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1949. 317 p.
5. Merleau-Ponty M. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University. 1968. 282 p.
6. Moore G.E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. 313 p.
7. Thich Nhat Hanh. Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991. 600 p.
КАК ВОЗМОЖНА ЭТИКА СЕГОДНЯ
А. Уле
г. Любляна, Словения
Предметом настоящей статьи является проблема действия в современную эпоху, когда отсутствуют твердые основания для моральной рефлексии и выбора. Здесь автор обращается к представлениям датского философа Кьеркегора о «современной эпохе», которая для Кьер-кегора существенно отличается от «эпохи революций». Особенно важна критика Кьеркегора в отношении средств массовой информации, способствующих всеобщему уравниванию индивидов, которое заставляет их пренебрегать особенностями характера и подлинным отличием от остальных, превращая публику в источник обобщенной зависти. Такая критика может быть применена в отношении цифровых средств массовой информации. Нам нужно найти иной метод решения проблем, чтобы выйти за пределы субъективизма, объективизма и интерсубъективизма в данном контексте. В настоящей статье автор предлагает обращение личности к сосуществованию, то есть реляционному представлению о существовании личности. Это предполагает подлинное осознание настоящего и возвышенную сопричастность, что может способствовать проявлению активного сострадания и привязанности.
Ключевые слова: моральное существование, уравнивание, сосуществование, активное сострадание, этос.
