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Christian Ethics and Applied Ethics

Jef Van Gerwen
I thought it useful, in responding to the paper written by J.A. Selling, to look at the relation between fundamental and applied ethics and between faith, ethics and science. Not so much because I do not share his opinion I agree with the content of his paper nor to limit the reection to the general ethical foundation, but because the meaning and range of the term Christian ethics, as it relates to applied ethics, is anything but evident. This is particularly true for ethical judgments within those social sectors (such as law, medicine or economics) where religion no longer plays a commonly accepted role as a public source of legitimation.1 Does not the communis opinio hold that religious traditions have nothing to contribute to ethics, and certainly to applied ethics, that cannot be known and conrmed from human reason? Therefore, within a pluralistic society, reference to religious arguments in ethical reection seems more hindersome than helpful when we seek a pragmatic consensus on rational, nonconfessional grounds, and strive towards a common value judgment on matters where religions are not competent. I believe that there are many positive arguments to support this communis opinio. I expect they will be used in our further discussion. When I continue to plead for a countercultural link between the Christian worldview and applied ethics, I do so to clarify the meaning of our position as a Centre. I believe that we must avoid understanding our position only as a sociological or political arrangement. We would do better to wonder whether there is any inherent link between Christianity and applied ethics, and if so, where this link lies. If there is no link, our function is reduced to a sociopolitical arrangement, which I personally would nd regrettable. In his paper, Prof. Selling has developed a carefully constructed argumentation mentioning the following elements: different basic metaphors can function as bearer of the ultimate criterion of ethical judgment, among them the metaphor of natural law and that of the human person; specic, role-determined concerns in ethical judgment presuppose a comprehensive criterion to be truly ethical (e.g. the whole person); this comprehensive criterion is not an empirical given, but is grounded in its objectivity in faith in an ultimate reality; this reality is not private, but intersubjectively communicable and interpretable via its symbolistic and ritual expressions; a religious tradition, here theism, more specically the Judeo-Christian tradition, is one form of such symbolic and ritual expression of an ultimate reality; the relation between religion and ethics is not direct or univocal, but is still real. Ethical questions play a central role in faith, and faith fullls a critical and selective function when faced with the multiplicity of possible ethical rules. If I may continue this line of thought, looking at our job description as Centre for Christian Ethics, then I propose to understand the term Christian ethics as follows: A Christian ethic is a more or less coherent whole of normative codes of behaviour based on a current understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and in particular on the rational, interpersonal reality that it expresses symbolically in its ultimacy (here, the relationship to God, revelation). This description presupposes the following:
1.

The Judeo-Christian Narrative Tradition

As equivalent to Sellings greater reality, source of objectivity, I understand: the Judeo-

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Christian narrative tradition, i.e. images of God, humanity and the world. I refer to verbal symbolism, to the narrative and its interpretations rather than to rituals, but this does not, in my view detract from Sellings approach.
2.

formalistic ethic that does not descend to the concrete social relevance of medical, economic, and other patterns of behaviour. This proposed orientation implies neither social fundamentalism nor any form of deism. It does presuppose the search for and formulation of middle axioms from Judeo-Christian worldview as they relate to specic areas of conduct. By middle axioms I means the sociohistorical determination of norms within specic elds, a determination that takes place in the light of an interpretation of the Christian tradition and of a reading and weighing of the available empirical information. Two examples should explain this. In economic ethics, we are familiar with the document of the American Episcopal Conference, Economic Justice for All, as an example of an ethical standpoint where the following steps are formulated distinctively and logically:
1. Formulation of a problem using a preliminary social analysis: the coexistence of poverty and wealth in the USA. 2. Outline of a Christian conception of humanity: reading history as salvation history (creation, covenant and redemption, with specic consequences for economic activity: a covenant code). 3. Deduction of several general, but religiously coloured value preferences, such as: the value of each person as person; the community and its general well-being as a condition for personal well-being; the universal purpose of goods on earth: a social mortgage on private property; the preferential option for the poor; labour as participation and self-realization; critique of the accumulation of wealth: selfmoderation, relativity of possession and consumption; economic relationships understood as a service to the well-being of one another. 4. Selecting consistent series of current norms

A Particularist and Dialogical Orientation

A particularist and dialogical orientation implies a simultaneous conrmation of the plurality of value perspectives the Christian ethic being only one possibility and of the specic value of our own tradition. The Christian starting point for ethical reection is an historically concrete and disctinctive starting point offering a meaningful contribution within the choir of world cultures.
3.

A Communitarian and Autonomous Position

This orientation presupposes more than a group of individual ethicists and other interested parties that form a club: we are thinking within a common historical tradition. This means something different than the institutional denition of a catholicity that calls itself Christian because of sociological membership in the institutions of the Catholic Church. The development of a Christian ethic, as a project of faith and intellect presupposes a certain autonomy of interpretation.
4.

An Open Task

With this I mean the application of the traditions understanding of the world to novel events using my (our) scientic insights as they are socially relevant.
5.

A Critical Attitude

We must be critical towards a too easily posited universal ethical rationality that disowns its own roots or tends towards a too neutral,

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for economic activity in the light of these preferences; a) human rights, also on a socioeconomic level; b) distributive and participative justice; c) economic solidarity. 5. Concrete rules to be applied to unemployment, war on poverty, agricultural policy, international trade. Another example, this time relating to ecological ethics, can be found in Technology, Environment and Human Values2 that consistently applies the following sequence: 1. Fundamental value patterns in the attitude towards nature and technology. The biblical view of the world as creation provides the basis for a critique of both extreme anthropocentrism and resacralization of the earth. Basic values such as stewardship, love of neighbour, justice and freedom are included in this view. 2. Expansion of the classical view of the care and respect due to nature as creation, by including considerations of the effects of technical knowledge and activity, the growing space and time dimensions, the responsibility for future generations, the insecurity and risk inherent in planning, and the pursuit of sustainability and diversity in the management of ecosystems. 3. Attention to the specic methods for estimating ecological damage and to alternatives for ecological conservation of energy, food-supplies, and raw materials. 4. Compilation of specic norms e.g. for the reduction of harmful emissions into the atmosphere, out of respect for the life of future generations and for non-human life. 5. Dening the goals of a long-term policy: changing lifestyle, reorienting towards a selective growth economy, adapting technology to a long-lasting, distributive and participative justice. * In the present context, a religious foundation

for ethics, and particularly for applied ethics, is easily misunderstood. It is attributed with doctrinal and political meanings that it does not have, or does not necessarily need to have. For claritys sake, I want to say explicitly that my approach to applied ethics as Christian ethics does not imply:
1.

Permanent Explicitation

It is neither desirable nor necessary that every argument in applied ethics e.g. a judgment on bribery in business ethics or a general prohibition of the use of some chemicals in industry explicitly refer to the way the basic norm (concepts of humanity and the world, preferences derived from Christian principles) is understood. Yet it would be wrong, as an analysis of existing ecological-ethical literature abundantly shows, if reection on the underlying conception of humanity should be absent from, or play no meaningful role in, the so-called applied questions. In ecological ethics, no meaningful judgment is possible on the value given to non-human life (so-called, animal rights, the desirability of preserving a variety of species, the relationship of anthropocentric vs biocentric concerns, the extent of our responsibility for future generations) without dening a fundamental orientation in terms of a particular worldview (a doctrine of creation, or deep ecology/holism, radical anthropocentrism, or an Eastern cosmology such as Tao, Buddhism). Whenever this is lacking, (ecological) applied ethics ends in confusion, or in a useless formalism (a metaethic or the formulation of some abstract norms whose application remains arbitrary).3
2.

Exclusivity

Attention to the foundation of applied norms within a particular religious tradition, such as the Judeo-Christian, hardly implies that this

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tradition has ethical values and norms that cannot be found in any other tradition, nor that this tradition has any inherent superiority over others. An exclusive understanding of Christian ethics as claiming absolute truth or a value surplus is, I think, unacceptable because it contradicts reality and is unnecessary for its concrete understanding. If we speak of Christian ethics as a distinct and particular normative social project, then this should be understood in a sociological and/or anthropological sense: i.e. that a particular socio-historical, circumscribed, cultural tradition contains a denite pattern of norms and rules typical for that culture, while each of these norms separately can be found in other cultural contexts. What counts in cultural analysis is not whether this or that norm can be found elsewhere, but the meaning the norm receives in the context of this specic culture. The norm that proscribes killing receives other connotations in the Buddhist, Moslem, JudeoChristian and humanist traditions. The ethicist must not forget this if he/she does not want to succumb to too easily posited universal argumentation.
3.

imply: a) an implicit perspective that, if necessary and useful, can be made explicit; b) a specic value orienting function even within the so-called secular and occupational areas; c) a critical instrument for reading the variety of ethical positions (which, of course, must and may be applied with personal discretion and individual differences); d) the possibility to relate ethical reection to the practical exercise of several virtues such as humility, appreciation of the other, hope, and veracity that qualies this reection (cf. Webers colouring of Verantwortungsethik with Gesinnungsethik in the political sphere; MacIntyres dissatisfaction with utilitarian calculus because of the unquantiability of justice...).

Uniformity

Of course, attention for the particular character of Christian ethics does not mean that there is only one valid explicitation of this ethic. An internal plurality of expression (legitimate dissent) is empirically, socio-historically (differentiation of interpretation of the same tradition) and normatively, acceptable. The Christian foundation of this ethic does

There remains a series of related questions that cannot be treated here. Theological: the obfuscation of meaning of the divine in modern society; Ecclesiastical: ethical standpoints formulated and promulgated by the Churchs hierarchy according to another method and logic; Scientic: sciences own internal discipline and norms, those specic to a profession, and how they relate to applied ethics; Politics: the particular rationality of leadership with which applied ethics must become involved in implementing its value judgments.

Literature
BELLAH, R., The Ethical Aims of Social Inquiry, in N. HAAN (Ed.), Social Science as Moral Inquiry, New York, 1983, 360-382.

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DE CLERCQ, B., The Christian Prole of Christian Social Ethics, in J. SELLING (Ed.), Personalist Ethics, Leuven, 1988, 265-278. GEERTZ, C., Religion As a Cultural System. Ethos, World view, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols, in The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, 1973. JONAS, H., The Imperative of Responsibility (Das Prinzip Verantwortung), Chicago, 1984. KORFF, W., Christlicher Glaube als Quelle konkreter Moral. berlegungen zum Verhaltnis von Religion und Ethos, in Herder Korrespondenz 44 (1990) 279-286. MACINTYRE, A., Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, 1988. SELLING, J., A Fundamental Base for Ethical Reection, in Ethische Perspectieven 1 (1991) 7-15. THYS, W., T. VANDEVELDE, H. OPDEBEECK, Economie, macht en gerechtigheid, Kapellen, 1989. USCC, Economic Justice for All. Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, Origins, 16/24, Nov 27. 1986. VAN BLADEL, L., Christelijk geloof en maatschappijkritiek, Antwerpen, 1980. VAN GERWEN, J., Niet uit eigen macht. De kerk als morele gemeenschap, Tielt, 1987. VERSTRAETEN, J., J. VAN GERWEN, Business en ethiek. Spelregels voor het ethisch ondernemen, Tielt, 1990.

Notes
1.This

is the result of the differentiation and secularization process which we have inherited. This is, however, beyond the purpose of this article. 2.I. BARBOUR, Technology, Environment and Human Values, Praeger, 1980. 3.A negative example of the latter can be found in P. TAYLOR, Respect for Nature. Princeton, 1986.

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