For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in
the reality of Christ. Both in his thinking and in his life, ethics were centred on the demand for action by responsible men and
women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory and of academic concerns with ethical systems precisely because
of their failure to confront evil directly. Evil, he asserted, was concrete and specific, and it could be combated only by the
specific actions of responsible people in the world. The uncompromising position Bonhoeffer took in his seminal work Ethics,
was directly reflected in his stance against Nazism. His early opposition turned into active conspiracy in 1940 to overthrow the
regime. It was during this time, until his arrest in 1943, that he worked on Ethics.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Life and Resistance
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau on
February 4, 1906.
Dietrich and his twin sister, Sabina,
were two of eight children born to Karl and Paula (von Hase) Bonhoeffer. Karl
Bonhoeffer, a professor of psychiatry and Neurology at Berlin University, was
Germany's leading empirical psychologist. Dietrich received his doctorate from
Berlin University in 1927, and lectured in the theological faculty during the
early thirties. He was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1931, and served two Lutheran
congregations, St. Paul's and Sydenham, in London from 1933-35.
In 1934, 2000 Lutheran pastors
organized the Pastors' Emergency League in opposition to the state church controlled
by the Nazis. This organization evolved into the Confessing Church, a free and
independent protestant church. Bonhoeffer served as head of the Confessing Church's
seminary at Finkenwalde. The activities of the Confessing Church were virtually
outlawed and its five seminaries closed by the Nazis in 1937.
Bonhoeffer's active opposition to National Socialism in the thirties continued to escalate until his recruitment into the
resistance in 1940. The core of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich was an elite group within
the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), which included, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Head of Military Intelligence, General Hans
Oster (who recruited Bonhoeffer), and Hans von Dohnanyi, who was married to Bonhoeffer's sister, Christine. All three were executed
with Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945. For their role in the conspiracy, the Nazis also executed Bonhoeffer's brother, Klaus, and a
second brother-in-law, Rudiger Schleicher, on April 23, 1945, seven days before Hitler himself committed suicide on April 30.
Bonhoeffer's role in the conspiracy
was one of courier and diplomat to the British government on behalf of the resistance,
since Allied support was essential to stopping the war. Between trips abroad
for the resistance, Bonhoeffer stayed at Ettal, a Benedictine monastery outside
of Munich, where he worked on his book, Ethics, from 1940 until his arrest
in 1943. Bonhoeffer, in effect, was formulating the ethical basis for when the
performance of certain extreme actions, such as political assassination, were
required of a morally responsible person, while at the same time attempting
to overthrow the Third Reich in what everyone expected to be a very bloody coup
d'etat. This combination of action and thought surely qualifies as one of the
more unique moments in intellectual history.
2. Ethics
Bonhoeffer's critique of
ethics results in a picture of an Aristotelian ethic that is Christological
in expression, i.e., it shares much in common with a character-oriented morality,
and at the same time it rests firmly on his Christology. For Bonhoeffer, the
foundation of ethical behavior is how the reality of the world and how the reality
of God are reconciled in the reality of Christ (Ethics, p. 198). To share
in Christ's reality is to become a responsible person, a person who performs
actions in accordance with reality and the fulfilled will of God (Ethics,
p.224). There are two guides for determining the will of God in any concrete
situation: 1) the need of one's neighbor, and 2) the model of Jesus of Nazareth.
There are no other guides, since Bonhoeffer denies that we can have knowledge
of good and evil (Ethics, p.231). There is no moral certainty in this
world. There is no justification in advance for our conduct. Ultimately all
actions must be delivered up to God for judgment, and no one can escape reliance
upon God's mercy and grace. "Before God self-justification is quite simply
sin" (Ethics, p.167).
Responsible action, in other words,
is a highly risky venture. It makes no claims to objectivity or certainty. It
is a free venture that cannot be justified in advance (Ethics, p.249).
But, nevertheless, it is how we participate in the reality of Christ, i.e.,
it is how we act in accordance with the will of God. The demand for responsible
action in history is a demand no Christian can ignore. We are, accordingly,
faced with the following dilemma: when assaulted by evil, we must oppose it
directly. We have no other option. The failure to act is simply to condone evil.
But it is also clear that we have no justification for preferring one response
to evil over another. We seemingly could do anything with equal justification.
Nevertheless, for Bonhoeffer, the reality of a demand for action without any
(a priori) justification is just the moral reality we must face, if we want
to be responsible people.
There are four facets to Bonhoeffer's
critique of ethics that should be noted immediately. First, ethical decisions
make up a much smaller part of the social world for Bonhoeffer than they do
for (say) Kant or Mill. Principally he is interested only in those decisions
that deal directly with the presence of vicious behavior, and often involve
questions of life and death. Second, Bonhoeffer's own life serves as a case
study for the viability of his views. Bonhoeffer is unique in this regard.
His work on ethics began while he was actively involved in the German resistance
to National Socialism and ended with his arrest in 1943. He fully expected that
others would see his work in the conspiracy as intrinsically related to the
plausibility of his ethical views. When it comes to ethics, Bonhoeffer noted,
"(i)t is not only what is said that matters, but also the man who says
it" (Ethics, p.267).
Third, like Aristotle, Bonhoeffer
stays as close to the actual phenomenon of making moral choices as possible.
What we experience, when faced with a moral choice, is a highly concrete and
unique situation. It may share much with other situations, but it is, nevertheless,
a distinct situation involving its own particulars and peculiarities, not excluding
the fact that we are making the decisions, and not Socrates or Joan of Ark.
And finally, again like Aristotle,
Bonhoeffer sees judgments of character and not action as fundamental to moral
evaluation. Evil actions should be avoided, of course, but what needs to be
avoided at all costs is the disposition to do evil as part of our character.
"What is worse than doing evil," Bonhoeffer notes, "is being
evil" (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the
lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything
he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed
a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity
of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his
twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for
a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics,
p.67). A falling away from righteousness is far worse that a failure of righteousness.
To focus exclusively on the lie and not on the liar is a failure to confront
evil.
Nevertheless, the central concern
of traditional ethics remains: What is right conduct? What justifies doing one
thing over another? For Bonhoeffer, there is no justification of actions in
advance without criteria for good and evil, and this is not available (Ethics,
p.231). Neither future consequences nor past motives by themselves are sufficient
to determine the moral value of actions. Consequences have the awkward consequence
of continuing indefinitely into the future. If left unattended, this feature
would make all moral judgments temporary or probationary, since none are immune
to radical revision in the future. What makes a consequence relevant to making
an action right is something other than the fact that it is a consequence. The
same is true for past motives. One motive or mental attitude surely lies behind
another. What makes one mental state and not an earlier state the ultimate ethical
phenomenon is something other than the fact that it is a mental state. Since
neither motives nor consequences have a fixed stopping point, both are doomed
to failure as moral criteria. "On both sides," Bonhoeffer notes, "there
are no fixed frontiers and nothing justifies us in calling a halt at some point
which we ourselves have arbitrarily determined so that we may at last form a
definite judgement" (Ethics, p.190). Without a reason for the relevance
of specific motives or consequences, all moral judgments become hopelessly tentative
and eternally incomplete.
What is more, general principles
have a tendency to reduce all behavior to ethical behavior. To act only for
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or to act only so that the maxim
of an action can become a principle of legislation, become as relevant to haircuts
as they do to manslaughter. All behavior becomes moral behavior, which drains
all spontaneity and joy from life, since the smallest misstep now links your
behavior with the worst crimes of your race, gender, or culture. Ethics cannot
be reduced to a search for general principles without reducing all of the problems
of life to a bleak, pedantic, and monotonous uniformity. The "abundant
fullness of life," is denied and with it "the very essence of the
ethical itself" (Ethics, p.263).
Reliance on theory, in other words,
is destructive to ethics, because it interferes with our ability to deal effectively
with evil. Bonhoeffer asks us to consider six strategies, six postures people
often strike or adopt when attempting to deal with real ethical situations involving
evil and vicious people. Any of these postures or orientations could employ
principles, laws, or duties from ethical theory. But, in the end, it makes little
difference what principles they invoke. The ethical postures themselves are
what make responsible action impossible. A resort to the dictates of reason,
for example, demands that we be fair to all the details, facts, and people involved
in any concrete moral situation (Ethics, p.67). The reasonable person
acts like a court of law, trying to be just to both sides of any dispute. In
doing so, he or she ignores all questions of character, since all people are
equal before the law, and it makes no difference who does what to whom. Thus,
whenever it is in the interest of an evil person to tell the truth, the person
of reason must reward him for doing so. The person of reason is helpless to
do otherwise, and in the end is rejected by all, the good and the evil, and
achieves nothing.
Likewise, Bonhoeffer argues, the
enthusiasm of the moral fanatic or dogmatist is also ineffective for a similar
reason. The fanatic believes that he or she can oppose the power of evil by
a purity of will and a devotion to principles that forbid certain actions. Again,
the concern is exclusively on action, and judgments of character are seen as
secondary and derivative. But the richness and variety of actual, concrete situations
generates questions upon questions for the application of any principle. Sooner
or later, Bonhoeffer notes, the fanatic becomes entangled in non-essentials
and petty details, and becomes prone to simple manipulation in the hands of
evil (Ethics, p.68).
The man or woman of conscience
presents an even stranger case. When faced with an inescapable ethical situation
that demands action, the person of conscience experiences great turmoil and
uncertainty. What the person of conscience is really seeking is peace of mind,
or a return to the way things were, before everything erupted into moral chaos.
Resolving the tensions is as important as doing the right thing. In fact, doing
the right thing should resolve the conflicts and tensions or it is not the right
thing. Consequently, people of conscience become prey to quick solutions, to
actions of convenience, and to deception, because feeling good about themselves
and their world is what matters ultimately. They fail completely to see, as
Bonhoeffer notes, that a bad conscience, that disappointment and frustration
over one's action, may be a much healthier and stronger state for their souls
to experience than peace of mind and feelings of well being (Ethics,
p.68).
An emphasis on freedom and private
virtuousness are even less capable of dealing effectively with evil. What Bonhoeffer
means by freedom is not coextensive with the theoretical freedom of the existential
either/or, where it makes no difference what we do, since we are all going to
get it in the end anyway; nor is it the freedom of the positivist's personal
preference or emotivism. No, freedom here means the freedom to make exceptions
to general rules or principles. The free person is the person who has the where-with-all
to ignore conscience, reputation, facts, and anything else in order to make
the best arrangement possible under the circumstances. This is the freedom to
act in any way necessary, even to do what is wrong, in order to avoid what is
worse, e.g., avoiding war by being unjust to large numbers of people, and consequently
failing to see that what he thinks is worse, may still be the better, failing
to see that evil can never be satiated (Ethics, p. 69).
On the other hand, the escape to
a domain of private virtue is, perhaps, of all temptations the most dangerous
to the Christian. This is a pulling back from the petty and vulgar affairs of
the world in order to avoid being contaminated by evil. This monastic urge is
rejected by Bonhoeffer, because for him there is no such thing as escaping your
responsibility to act. When faced with evil, there is no middle path. You either
oppose the persecution of the innocent or you share in it. No one can preserve
his or her private virtue by turning away from the world (Ethics, p.69).
Bonhoeffer's last category, duty,
is perhaps the most important to him, because it is the most easily co-opted
by evil; and again it makes no difference what laws we introduce to determine
our duty. If a devotion to duty does not discriminate in terms of character,
it will end up serving evil. "The man of duty," Bonhoeffer observes,
"will end by having to fulfill his obligations even to the devil"
(Ethics, p.69).
Bonhoeffer replaces philosophical
ethics and its pursuit of criteria to justify action in advance with an ethics
grounded in the emergence of Christ as reconciler. The cornerstone of Bonhoeffer's
ethical world is a social/moral realism. In any given context there is always
a right thing to do. This reality is a direct result of his Christology. The
reality of the sensible world, with all its variety, multiplicity, and concreteness,
has been reconciled with the spiritual reality of God. These two radically divorced
worlds have now been made compatible and consistent in the reality of Christ
(Ethics, p.195). Through Jesus the reality of God has entered the world
(Ethics, p.192). If an action is to have meaning, it must correspond
to what is real. Since there is only the reality of Christ, Christ is the foundation
of ethics. Any Christian who attempts to avoid falsehoods and meaninglessness
in his or her life must act in accordance with this reality.
Furthermore, the sole guide for
acting in accordance with this reality is the model of Jesus' selfless behavior
in the New Testament. There are numerous dimensions to this model. First and
foremost, your action can in no way be intended to reflect back on you, your
character, or your reputation. You must, for the sake of the moment, unreservedly
surrender all self-directed wishes and desires (Ethics, p.232). It is
the other, another person, that is the focus of attention, and not yourself.
In ethical action, the left hand really must be unaware of what the right hand
is doing if the right hand is to do anything ethical. If not, your so-called
good action becomes contaminated and its moral nature altered.
Bonhoeffer illustrates this notion
of selfless action by contrasting the behavior of Jesus in the New Testament
to that of the Pharisee. The Pharisee "...is the man to whom only the knowledge
of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life..."(Ethics,
p.30). Every moment of his life is a moment where he must choose between good
and evil (Ethics, p.30). Every action, every judgment, no matter how
small, is permeated with the choice of good and evil. He can confront no person
without evaluating that person in terms of good and evil (Ethics, p.31).
For him, all judgments are moral judgments. No gesture is immune to moral condemnation.
Jesus refuses to see the world
in these terms. He lightly, almost cavalierly, casts aside many of the legal
distinctions the Pharisee labors to maintain. He bids his disciples to eat on
the Sabbath, even though starvation is hardly in question. He heals a woman
on the Sabbath, although after eighteen years of illness she could seemingly
wait a few more hours. Jesus exhibits a freedom from the law in everything he
does, but nothing he does suggests all things are possible. There is nothing
arbitrary about his behavior. There is, however, a simplicity and clarity. Unlike
the Pharisee, he is unconcerned with the goodness or badness of those he helps,
unconcerned with the personal moral worth of those he meets, talks to, dines
with, or heals. He is concerned solely and entirely with the well being of another.
He exhibits no other concern. He is the paradigm of selfless action, and the
exact opposite of the Pharisee, whose every gesture is fundamentally self-reflective.
The responsible person is, thus,
a selfless person, who does God's will by serving the spiritual and material
needs of another, since "...what is nearest to God is precisely the need
of one's neighbor" (Ethics, p.136). The selfless model of Jesus
is his or her only guide to responsible action. And second, the responsible
person must not hesitate to act for fear of sin. Any attempt to avoid personal
guilt, any attempt to preserve moral purity by withdrawing from conflicts is
morally irresponsible. For Bonhoeffer, no one who lives in this world can remain
disentangled and morally pure and free of guilt (Ethics, p.244). We must
not refuse to act on our neighbor's behalf, even violently, for fear of sin.
To refuse to accept guilt and bear it for the sake of another has nothing to
do with Christ or Christianity. "(I)f I refuse to bear guilt for charity's
sake," Bonhoeffer argues, "then my action is in contradiction to my
responsibility which has its foundation in reality" (Ethics, p.241).
The risk of guilt generated by responsible action is great and cannot be mitigated
in advance by self-justifying principles. There is no certainty in a world come
of age. No one, in other words, can escape a complete dependency on the mercy
and grace of God.
3. References and Further Reading
All quotes from: Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Ethics, (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., Touchstone Edition, 1995).
Works by Bonhoeffer:
SANCTORUM COMMUNIO (The Communion
of Saints)
ACT AND BEING
THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
LIFE TOGETHER
ETHICS
LETTERS AND PAPERS FROM PRISON
GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN, 4 vols.
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