Abstract
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thinking about ethics and Christianity in his famous book Ethics, an unfinished and posthumously published work representing his most mature thought on the subject, is a fascinating attempt to combine different, and often conflicting, strands in the Christian intellectual tradition. In this article, I outline his thinking therein, analyse the advantages and disadvantages in his approach, and relate it to developments in contemporary philosophy. His critique of an excessive stress upon principles and abstraction in opposition to a concern for concrete circumstances is, I argue, best seen as a necessary critique of what I call moralism rather than morality. It is also related to recent philosophical theories of particularism and the debates about ‘emergency ethics’ in current philosophy. On the negative side, Bonhoeffer has a tendency to treat non-Christian ethics as necessarily relativist and at times is excessively influenced by the elements in Christian theological tradition that are hostile to the natural and to non-Christian philosophy. In addition, his invocation of ‘the Divine mandates’ seems to have undesirable implications for some genuine values in liberal democratic theory and practice.
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Notes
- 1.
Selwyn Grave, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia from 1961 to 1981, is a contender for the honour, but he was originally, at least, a New Zealander. Julius Kovesi was another Catholic who practiced philosophy with distinction, first at the University of New South Wales and then at the University of Western Australia, but that was slightly after Max. Dr. Vernon Rice at Melbourne University was another with claims and roughly contemporary with Max, but he published very little and was in the Thomist camp with his own personal twist to it. He was an eccentric but influential figure with some of the brighter students but not as well known in the wider world as Max.
- 2.
In what follows, I shall use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ as synonyms. There is some point in distinguishing them in some contexts but those issues are not directly relevant to my discussion here.
- 3.
The quotation is from the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible.
- 4.
There is a hardback version of this Bethge edition (Macmillan, New York, 1964) in which unfortunately the pagination and the arrangement of chapters differ (Bonhoeffer gave no real guide to the best arrangement). My references will be to the Fontana paperback, but I will give chapter and section headings to guide those who use the hardback.
- 5.
The full sentence indicates even more the relevance of natural philosophy to faith: ‘Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.’
- 6.
I have discussed the complexities of the Akedah for religion and moral knowledge, and general problems of religion and morality, in Coady 2019.
- 7.
This essay was originally published in 2012, the Special 50th Anniversary Issue Tribute to Max Charlesworth in Sophia 51(4), 449–464. It has been revised by the author for publication here.
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Coady, C.A.J. (2019). Moralism and Anti-moralism: Aspects of Bonhoeffer’s Christian Ethic. In: Wong, P., Bloor, S., Hutchings, P., Bilimoria, P. (eds) Considering Religions, Rights and Bioethics: For Max Charlesworth. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18148-2_7
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