1993, oct, radical interpretation and moral responsibility a proposal for theological ethics

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Radical Interpretation and Moral Responsibility: A Proposal for Theological EthicsAuthor(s): William SchweikerSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 613-637Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1204186Accessed: 28/03/2009 09:36

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Radical Interpretation and Moral

Responsibility: A Proposal forTheological Ethics*

William Schweiker / University f Chicago

Questions about responsibility are at the heart of most contemporarymoral and political debates. For instance, we ask about who is responsiblefor decisions in medical care and the termination of particular treat-ments. Then again, there are debates which surround the responsible useof deadly force against aggression and oppression, or about the moralityof intervention into the affairs of other nations in order to relieve humansuffering. Each of these pressing moral and political questions, and manyothers as

well, hingeson the idea of

responsibility.This is because the

idea of responsibility provides the means to articulate the moral demandson the exercise of power by moral agents. In an age marked by the radicalextension of human power through technology, myriad forms of humansuffering, and also increasing moral division and conflict, it is not surpris-ing that the idea of responsibility should be so central to moral reflectionand debate.

In this essay I propose to explore recent contributions to the theory ofmoral responsibility. The root problem I want to address is how to give a

plausible account of the way in which moral norms become constitutive ofmoral identity and thus empower a way of life. And I must do so withoutviolating genuine moral freedom or, conversely, lapsing into some formof moral skepticism which holds that moral norms are nothing more thanrecommendations for action based on subjective moral preferences. Inorder to address these matters, I want to examine the work of CharlesTaylor on the question of moral self-understanding and Hans Jonas'swell-known proposal for an ethics of responsibility in a technological age.

Myintention is to use this examination to

developa constructive

proposal* This essay was initially presented in different form as a lecture for the conference on

Realism and Responsibility in Contemporary Ethics held at the Divinity School of theUniversity of Chicago, February 27-29, 1992. I want to thank Franklin I. Gamwell, LoisMalcolm, Kristine A. Culp, and James J. Thompson for helpful comments on this essay.

? 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/93/7304-0008$01.00

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The Journal of Religion

for theological ethics, but I shall also be criticizing the accounts given byTaylor and Jonas. Specifically, I argue that in order to develop an ade-quate theory of responsibility, we must specify a distinctive interpretiveactivity, which I call the act of radical interpretation, s itself basic to moralself-understanding. I further contend that a genuinely radical interpreta-tion of our lives implicitly or explicitly entails theological claims, a point,we will see, confirmed by the works of Taylor and Jonas. What I am pro-posing is a theological account of responsible moral existence that centerson the intimate connection between moral experience and interpretationwithin self-understanding. In doing so I hope to clarify the human sig-nificance of Christian beliefs and show the contribution of theology to

reflection on the meaning of responsibility as a decisive concept in pub-lic life.I will make the case for my position by demonstrating how it can isolate

and answer problems in other theories of responsibility. I do not imaginethat this argument will satisfy all critics. Yet I hope to show the way inwhich the idea of radical interpretation within a theological context canprovide an account of moral responsibility that is important for currentethical reflection. That said, I want to begin by outlining the position Iintend to propose. The remainder of the essay will then be dedicated tospecifying it in some detail by examining the work of Taylor and Jonas.

INTERPRETATION AND MORAL EXPERIENCE

At its most basic level, moral responsibility means that someone or somecommunity can and must give an account, provide an answer, for whatthey have done or intend to do. The use of the discourse of responsibilitymeans that the capacity of an agent to be a causal force in the world is

subjected to the demand to give an account of the actual or intendedexercise of power with respect to accepted norms for assessing and evalu-ating human behavior.2 The thesis I will defend in this essay is that thegrounds for an adequate ethics of responsibility is an experience of the

'Any examination of responsibility requires that we draw a distinction between causaland moral, or agent, responsibility. Causal responsibility pertains to claims regarding eventsor things which bring about or cause a state of affairs but in which it is difficult, if notimpossible, to impute any intention to those events or things. Agent responsibility entailsclaims about someone or something who is responsible, what he, she, or it is responsiblefor, and also that to which or to whom the agent is responding. My concern in this essay isobviously with moral responsibility but mindful of the fact that human agents are causalforces in the world.

2 The question of whether or not one can speak of corporate agents is of course de-bated. For a recent discussion of these matters, see Peter A. French, ed., Individual and Collec-tive Responsibility Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972). Also see WilliamSchweiker, Accounting for Ourselves: Accounting and the Discourse of Ethics, Accounting,Organizations nd Society 18, nos. 2 and 3 (1993): 231-52.

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Radical Interpretation

value of existence-one's own and that of others-which makes a claimto determine self-understanding and a construal of the world. This expe-rience is a sense of the worth of others and ourselves as that to which weare responding in the totality of our lives. Admittedly, we often have thisexperience only in extreme cases. For instance, an act of violence againstinnocent persons discloses what ought not exist and thus the fragilegoodness of existence. The smile of a child can disclose what simply oughtto be. One has in such experiences an insight into the confluence of good-ness and existence which backs moral commitment and more specificmoral norms because it permeates the totality of one's life with a sense ofvalue as the grounds for specifically moral obligations. Without some

such experience, it is difficult to imagine what would possibly lead us tounderstand our lives in moral terms.However, these particular experiences are fleeting, a fact which reveals

our lack of sensibility to the goodness of mundane life. What is neededin the moral life, accordingly, is some refinement and formation of moralsensibility. The experience of value, or goodness, to which we are re-sponding in the moral life is refined and deepened, I hold, through anact of interpretation. This act constitutes moral identity on grounds otherthan fleeting experiences of moral goodness even as it entails the criticismof self-deceptive egoism. This act of interpretation forms a settled disposi-tion and self-understanding to see and evaluate one's own life and thatof others in moral terms. To borrow from Paul Ricoeur, we can call thecritical, formed insight into moral worth a second moral naivete aboutthe world and others.3 It is an affirmation of the worth of existence, butan affirmation which is refined and tested by means of a critical act ofinterpretation which defines the self-understanding of moral agents anddetermines a way of life.

Mythesis, then, is that a distinctive form of

self-understanding and anaffirmation of the value of existence are interdependent. How we thinkabout the good and how we experience the good, if I can put it like that,are linked in complex ways which constitute genuine moral understand-ing. More specifically, the connection between the experience of moralvalue and self-understanding in the lives of agents is constituted in whatI call radical interpretation. Radical interpretation is the activity of self-criticism in which the values and norms a person or community endorsesas important to its life are transformed by some idea, symbol, or event

which rightly claims to guide conduct because it articulates and deepensthe experience which instigates the moral life. Radical interpretation is

3 See Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth:Texas Christian University, 1976). Also see his Hermeneutics nd the Human Sciences, ed. andtrans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

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the means whereby critical reflection on moral values and norms trans-forms moral sensibility, giving rise to the sense of responsibility. Thus,

moral experience is not dependent on a special moral faculty of themind; it is enacted in a certain form of interpretative, self-critical reflec-tion. We do not perceive the goodness of existence in the same way weperceive that something simply exists. The object of moral experience isnot brute facticity but, rather, existence viewed in the light of what en-dows existence with worth encountered in concrete embodiment.4

This brings us to the basic question I must address in this essay. I mustspecify the idea or symbol we are to interpret in order to refine anddeepen the experience that existence is endowed with value over againstrival proposals for what ought in fact to mediate moral understanding,proposals we will see in Taylor and Jonas. Not only is there the needto criticize and refine moral sensibility in the formation of moral self-understanding, a theme I will examine through Taylor's work, but thismust be done with respect to some idea or symbol which generalizesmoral claims and empowers persons to act on them, a matter, we will see,Jonas helps us to address. What I attempt to show is that the act of radicalinterpretation basic to moral self-understanding ought to be undertaken

with respect to claims about God if we are to make sense of the idea ofresponsibility in our contemporary situation. This is not simply an appealto Scripture as what mediates and transforms moral understanding; it isappeal to what Scripture and indeed all of Christian faith are ultimatelyabout: the human relation to the divine. And at this level, my argumentdraws on yet also moves beyond the work of these two philosophers.

Understanding this point depends of course on some idea of Godand the character of scriptural and theological claims about the divine.This is especially the case for my argument since, as we will see, Jonasand Taylor specify a theological dimension to their ethics. Taylor usestheological discourse to back our sense of the goodness of creation andto ground commitment to moral norms. Jonas draws on the idea of cre-ation to ground reverence for the integrities of life. The idea of creation

4 I am not arguing, as intuitionists like Hutcheson and Shaftesbury did, for a specialmoral faculty-a moral sense-which apprehends sui generis moral values or duties. For arecent intuitionist

proposal,see David

Little,The Nature and

Basis of Human Rights, inProspects or a Common Morality, ed. Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 73-92. Likewise, if I am correct that the insightreached through radical interpretation is that it is good to exist, then basic moral terms,like good, cannot be specified solely in nonnaturalistic terms. What we mean by goodnessis bound to conditions necessary for the continuation and flourishing of existence, humanand nonhuman. This does not commit me to a form of the naturalistic fallacy, as it is oftencalled, because I am not arguing that good is the same as other natural properties ofentities or persons.

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Radical Interpretationfunctions in his ethics to provide a motive to live by the imperative ofresponsibility. In distinction to these arguments, I hold that the Christian

witness is that the name of God symbolizes the transformation of power,even ultimate power, with respect to an endorsement of the worth of fi-nite reality. Theological discourse transforms moral understanding andmoral imperatives because it specifies the nature of the moral reality inwhich we live, move, and have our being. Understood in this way, thename of God asserts that the brute release of power is not the ultimatedefining fact of reality from a theological ethical point of view but, rather,the transformation of power through the recognition of finite goodness.To understand oneself and the world in and through this name bindsone's capacities for action to determinate moral purposes while also re-fining moral perception. This is the moral and religious meaning of thedivine name for the Christian life. I am arguing, then, that the most basicexperience of responsibility is transformed and deepened by means of aninterpretive act which constitutes moral identity through understandingthe meaning of the name of God.

This argument is crafted in order to retrieve and clarify two fundamen-tal claims of Christian thought and to show their import for contempo-

raryethics. The first claim is that we understand ourselves

authenticallyonly in relation to the divine. Understanding ourselves through the nameof God has the effect of binding our power as self-interpreting agents tospecific norms that concern the recognition, respect, and well-being offinite life. Second, theologians have long argued that the basic moral pre-cepts are the love of God and the love of neighbor, precepts which alsoentail, as Augustine noted, the proper love of self.5 Taken together, thesetwo basic claims of Christian thought mean that the knowledge and loveof the worth of others and ourselves is grasped through an interpretiveact of understanding life from a theological perspective. We are to knowand love others in God. Understanding oneself and the world from thisperspective necessarily commits one to the moral life, that is, to acting onprinciples of care and respect for others and ourselves. Can one makesense of these claims in the context of current ethics?

I hope to show that at the very least we must assume or postulate somebasic moral experience in order to make sense of our discourse of respon-sibility and, furthermore, that the formation of moral understanding is

integralto what it means to be a moral

agentin

anyfull sense of the term.

My argument also traces the connection between how we think and speakabout the good and our experience of value. By examining the works ofTaylor and Jonas, I will try to formulate the root experience of responsi-

5 See Saint Augustine, The City of God, 19.14 (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1958).

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bility around the interrelation of care and respect in our self-understanding as moral agents. And I hope to show how these are re-

fined and tutored through the activity of radical interpretation withrespect to claims about God and the language of responsibility. Withoutsuch an argument, it is difficult, I believe, to understand why disputesabout responsibility matter so much in our moral and political lives.

I want now to develop the argument for radical interpretation andmoral responsibility by exploring the idea of responsibility itself. Thisadmittedly brief conceptual analysis is important for clarifying the direc-tion of the argument of this essay. It also provides the backdrop for myexamination of the work of Taylor and Jonas in order to isolate theircontributions to a theological ethics of responsibility.

THE IDEA OF RESPONSIBILITY

The idea of responsibility has risen to importance in Western moral dis-course over the last few centuries.6 It came to prominence in ethics withthe rise of modern self-consciousness and the insistence on moral auton-omy, the human right to be free from tyranny, and the capacity of human

beings to intervene and to change the natural and social world for theirown purposes. More basically, the discourse of responsibility designateswhat it means for us to be present in the world as agents. To be a moralagent is to be responsiblefor oneself in and through responding to othersand being accountable for bringing something into being through theexercise of power.7 Each of these dimensions of responsibility is im-

6 See Richard McKeon, The Development and Significance of the Concept of Responsi-

bility in his Freedom and History and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1990). Also see Albert R. Jonsen, Responsibility n Modern Religious Ethics (Washington, D.C.:Corpus, 1968). For another helpful discussion, see William Kneale, The Responsibility ofCriminals, in Moral Problems: A Collection of Philosophical Essays, ed. James Rachels (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 161-81. For one of the first philosophical works on respon-sibility and freedom, see F H. Bradley, The Vulgar Notion of Responsibility in Connectionwith the Theories of Free-Will and Necessity, in his Ethical Studies (Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1988).

7 The structure of responsibility is reflected in H. Richard Niebuhr's well-known defini-tion. Niebuhr defined responsibility as the idea of an agent's action as a response to anaction upon him in accordance with his interpretation of the later action and with his expec-tation of a response to his response; and all in a

continuing communityof

agents.See H.

Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, ntroduction byJames M. Gustafson (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 65. Also see his Faith on Earth: AnInquiry nto the Structure of Human Faith, ed. Richard R. Niebuhr (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1989). Niebuhr and other theologians insisted that what we respond to isa Thou, a personal reality. Only a Thou can rightly summon the self to answer for its exis-tence. The problem we face in our time is, I judge, that we must answer to and be account-able for nonpersonal reality and the possibility of future life on this planet. This requires anew account of responsibility. Providing such an account is one task of this essay.

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portant. I want to clarify these dimensions even though my main concernis with responsibility for ourselves and the form of freedom it entails.

Accountabilityis basic to

assigning culpability,the

groundsfor

praiseand blame. Much of what is ordinarily meant by responsibility is simplyaccountability for one's actions. The language of moral accounting, asWilliam Kneale notes, began with an extended use of debt words tocover the whole range of duty. 8The idea that persons are liable for theirdebt to others and must account for this is the connection between ac-countability and responsibility. Indeed, in classical Christian theologythinkers like Saint Anselm argued that sinfill human beings owe a debtto God, a debt they cannot pay but which God does pay through Christ.

Moral accounting and the practices of praise and blame take on ultimatesignificance in this theological framework. More simply, accountability re-quires, as H. Richard Niebuhr once noted, that we anticipate other's reac-tions to our actions-even a divine other. We ought to understand our-selves as accountable in the present with respect to the past and inanticipation of future courses of action.9

Answerability denotes the normative dimension of responsibility. Weare answerable to someone or something, including ourselves, that has arightful claim or authority to determine standards of conduct. Thatwhich summons an answer might be another person, the state, or, in clas-sical thought, the voice of conscience and the dictates of God engravedon the human heart. In this respect, the form of understanding charac-teristic of moral agents is rightly characterized as dialogical in character.We are creatures who must answer for our lives with respect to what orwho questions us.10 The dimension of answerability concerns the rela-tions, norms, and values by which we ought to make decisions as theseare heard by the self. It is little wonder, then, that theologians have

traditionally asserted the need to hear divine commands and have spo-ken of the voice of conscience.Finally, we are accountablefor what we do and are answerable to some-

thing or someone insofar as we are responsiblefor ourselves. This dimen-sion of responsibility denotes the moral identity of an individual or a com-munity. Identity is assigned to an agent or community in a variety of

8 Kneale, p. 172.9 For a discussion of this, see H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self: Also see Georg

Picht, Der Begriff der Verantwortung, in his Wahrheit, Vernunft, Verantwortung: hilosoph-ische Studien (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1969), pp. 318-42.10The language of conscience was originally meant to designate this fact. In other words,the act of self-transcendence in conscience is one in which we question ourselves with re-spect to who we are and what we do. We can morally censure ourselves (the guilty con-science) as well as commend ourselves. See, e.g., Paul Tillich, Morality and Beyond New York:Harper & Row, 1963) and Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie andEdward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

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ways, often through narratives we tell or adopt, through declarative state-ments ( I ate the banana ; She insulted Harry ), or by stipulation ( The

owner of an ox which gores another shall pay reparations ).1 Thou arethe man, Nathan said to David about the murder of Uriah (2 Sam. 12:7).Each assignment of who is acting is always made with respect to some-thing or someone to whom one is answerable for one's conduct; in Da-vid's case this was God and God's law.

It is important that we speak about ourselves and others as responsibleagents and thus enact our identities through dialogical means. This lin-guistic fact implies something about the complex character of moral free-dom. Insofar as we designate who is acting, moral freedom entails, butis not limited to, the capacity to make choices for which we are account-able. To say who is accountable, and, thus, open to praise and blame,requires that some person or community actually act, exert force in theworld subject to norms and values. But moral identity is not simply adescription of the act or intention to act; our lives are richer and morecomplex than that. Freedom is also the condition for answerability. Weask who is acting only if basic conditions for moral action are evident,that a person can consider what to do and has the ability to do so. This is

what gives a sense of depth to human beings; we have capacities for actionand response to others, and these capacities undergird our actual choices.But the fact that someone can, in principle, live by a moral ought doesnot yet tell us who she or he is. Moral freedom is, therefore, also thecapacity, or power, to interpret who one is with respect to actual lifeand the values and beliefs one holds. The freedom to be responsibleforourselves entails, then, the other dimensions of responsibility and theforms of freedom they manifest.

By examining our discourse about responsibility, I have isolated di-mensions of responsibility and also the forms of moral freedom they en-tail. Work in ethics often concentrates on accountability and answerabil-ity, with respect to both moral freedom and the conditions, scope, andnorms of responsibility. Without denying the importance of these mat-ters, I will examine the freedom to interpret who one is as a moral beingsince, if I am right, it interrelates the other dimensions of responsibility.It is also at this level of reflection that we will see the importance of careand respect in the moral life. In order to address the question of moral

self-interpretation,I want to

explorethe recent work of

Charles Taylor.

'1 On this, see H. L. A. Hart, The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights, in Essays onLogic and Language, ed. Antony Flew (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951), pp. 145-66. For adiscussion of the narrative ascription of identity, see Paul Ricoeur, Soi-mnme ommeun autre(Paris: tditions du Seuil, 1990), pp. 137-98.

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SELF-CRITICISM AND MORAL IDENTITY

What constitutes us as moral beings, Taylor argues, is that we can under-take the radical evaluation of our lives.12 We are not constituted as selvesin discrete acts of choice or brute acts of will, as existentialists want us tobelieve. All of our choices depend on the values we endorse and also onthe various social and historical sources which have funded the modernsense of self. We cannot choose not to have some values which direct ourchoices. As Taylor puts it, we exist in a moral space of questions abouthow to live with respect to some idea of the good, some strong evalua-tion, that orients our lives. If we are properly to understand ourselves,we must attempt to grasp the various, and often conflicting, values thathave shaped our identities. By articulating the goods that arise in thehistory of the West, Taylor seeks to articulate what has made us who weare, the moral order in which we are set, and how we are empowered tolive in a specific way.

Through his idea of strong evaluation, Taylor is centering on thecare structure of human existence. We are beings who care about ourexistence and our world; things matter to us. All persons have some con-

cern, perhapseven an

ultimate concern, as Paul Tillich put it.13 This isnot a simple psychological observation about persons; it is an ontologicalclaim made by Taylor about human existence. We are those beings whoseexistence is a matter of concern to us, and thus we orient our lives bysome framework of value and some idea of the good, a strong evaluation.But this also means, in Susan Wolf's words, that we have the ability tostep back from ourselves and decide whether we are the selves we wantto be. 14 Lack of concern about which values ought to guide our choicesand shape our lives is to live at best an impulsive life and at worse achaotic one.15 Human beings are, as Taylor puts it, self-interpreting ani-

12 See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1989), and his Responsibility for Self, in Free Will, ed. GaryWatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 111-26. Also see William Schweiker,

The Good and Moral Identity: A Theological Ethical Response to Charles Taylor's Sourcesof the Self, Journal of Religion 72, no. 4 (1992): 560-72.

13See, e.g., Paul Tillich, SystematicTheology, ol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1951).

14 Susan Wolf, Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility, in The Inner Citadel: Essayson Individual Autonomy, ed. John Christman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),p. 140.

15 Harry Frankfurt calls such persons wantons. He defines wantons as agents who havefirst-order desires but who are not persons because, whether or not they have desires of thesecond order, they have no second-order volitions. Harry Frankfurt, Freedom of the Willand the Concept of a Person, in his The Importance f What We Care About: Philosophical Essays(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 16.

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mals. In the domain of ethics, this means, in his judgment, consideringwhat we fundamentally value.

For Taylor, the specific values that form our lives are embedded in themoral traditions of the West. As a student of Hegel, he is clear that themoral life draws its substance from the mores of a tradition or commu-nity. This does not mean that these values impose themselves heterono-mously on us. We can evaluate the values which have shaped who we areand thus orient our lives and our actions. But in doing so we put our-selves into question in the most radical sense of the term. That is, since atradition or community has shaped what we value, to question that valueorientation, to engage in radical evaluation, is to submit our lives to self-criticism. This kind of self-criticism allows us to formulate what some phi-losophers like Harry Frankfurt have called second-order desires andvolitions, that is, the desires and volitions we want to define who we are.These desires and volitions are not simply given in the emotional fabricof our lives. They are ones we consciously want to guide and orient ourlives. In a word, we are responsible for ourselves, we are autonomous,insofar as we come to endorse in our decisions the values we want toorient our lives.

The ideas of radical evaluation and second-order desires and volitionsare important for ethics. They allow us to grant that we come to moralsituations with the values of our moral traditions in hand and also first-order desires and volitions. Yet they also provide the conceptual meansto explore how we are responsible for ourselves through self-criticismwithout claiming that the I, or ego, is the origin of all value, as someidealists hold, or that our moral identities, as existentialists argue, aredefined by radical acts of choice. In other words, Taylor's theory refash-ions our understanding of moral autonomy. To be autonomous is not to

act out of radical choice; it is critically to endorse the values one wants toorient one's life. We are indeed free because we make critical evaluationsand form second-order volitions and desires about who we want to be.But this freedom is compatible with the social and historical character ofhuman life and the linguistic means we use to depict our lives. Humanfreedom is always situated in some historically constituted moral space.

Responsibility is linked to our capacity to reflect on and then revise, ortransform, our lives through the criticism of what we care about. Radicalevaluation is what Taylor means by this process of self-revision. However,when we ask about the standard for evaluation, Taylor's project becomesproblematic for the enterprise of ethics. He writes: Our attempts to for-mulate what we hold important must, like descriptions, strive to be faith-ful to something. But what they strive to be faithful to is not an indepen-dent object with a fixed degree of evidence, but rather a largely

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inarticulate sense of what is of decisive importance. 16 Taylor's nsistenceon what we value is important for a proper understanding of moral au-

tonomy. We hardly want to claim that persons are responsible when theyare coerced into adopting a certain way of life. Moreover, Taylor s right,in my judgment, to insist that moral descriptions strive to be faithful tosomething; they have, in this sense, a realistic ntention. But therein liesthe problem in his argument. How can our moral evaluations be faithfulto what Taylor admits is our deepest unstructured sense of what is im-portant ?17

The problem is not, I believe, in Taylor's appeal to what is importantto us; moral agents are beings with emotional and volitional depth.Rather, he problem is how what we care about can serve as the criterionfor moral descriptions nsofar as our sense of what is important remainsinarticulate. Taylor tries to answer this problem by providing a history ofthe formation of our moral values. That is, he undertakes to articulatethose values which have historically ormed who we are, the very sourcesof the self, and thus must be endorsed in any self-critical affirmation ofourselves. But why, we might ask, ought that history matter to us? CanTaylor's history actually ground our commitment o the moral life? Laterwe will see how

Taylortries to answer these criticisms of a historical

grounding of moral values. He does so, interestingly enough, throughtheological discourse. But at this junction, I think we must connect theidea of evaluation with Taylor's own admission that we are fundamentallyself-interpreting animals interacting with others and our world. In orderto do so, I want to introduce the idea of radical interpretation.

EVALUATION AND RADICAL INTERPRETATION

I have explored Taylor's position because of the affinity between whatI call radical interpretation and his idea of evaluation. But an ethic ofresponsibility must insist on interpretation as well as evaluation. The op-erative distinction between these activities s that interpretation rendersexplicit the meaning of the relation of self and other, whereas evaluation,at least as Taylor specifies it, can rest on an inarticulate sense of what isimportant to us. This distinction s important for an ethics of responsibil-ity because moral descriptions are trying to be faithful not simply to ourinchoate sense of what is important but also to the world and others withwhom we are interacting. If I am right, an ethics of responsibility s com-mitted to showing how moral descriptions must be faithful to the experi-

16Taylor, Responsibility for Self, p. 123.17 Ibid., p. 125.

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ence of the worth of existence and formulate this into an imperative foraction.

The form of self-criticism that defines who we are as moral agents isnot, as it seems for Taylor, Frankfurt, and others, a debate within theevaluator's personal life about personal desires and volitions. The centralmoral problem is not simply how to be true to oneself, the authenticityof one's life, but how to respond authentically to others.18 Moral self-criticism is defined with reference to what demands and empowers someanswer from us in the claim of its worth actually to exist in the world.This means, I submit, that moral identity is constituted not only by theevaluation of what we care about, as Taylor insists, but also by the experi-ence of respect. Respect is the recognition of and regard for what is otherthan the self and its projects. The experience of respect discloses the factthat we are always interacting with others and our world as well as evalu-ating our own lives. This is because respect rests on the recognition ofsomething as intrinsically worthy of it. 19 What our moral descriptionsmust be faithful to is that which is worthy of respect and is of decisiveimportance for us. We have experiences of value because we are beingswho care but also because the giving and withdrawing of respect consti-tutes our

beingin the world with others.

I can clarify this point about care and respect as basic to the idea ofradical interpretation by drawing a distinction rooted in the fact that weact for ends and also interact with others. Taylor's idea of evaluation, asI understand it, actually pertains to a condition necessary for any move-ment to be understood as a genuine action. For a movement to be anaction it must be directed to some end apprehended as good, otherwisewe would be speaking of mere motion. Examining what we value, andthus the dynamics of care, is an exploration of a condition for distinctivelyhuman action. If we are to be responsible for ourselves, we must criticallyevaluate the end or goods that orient our lives as valuing beings. And thisis the point of Taylor's theory of radical evaluation.

Although examining the conditions of distinctively human action isnecessary for genuine self-understanding, it is not sufficient for an ac-count of moral action and identity. This is because respect is also a primalmoral experience itself; it is the recognition of and regard for the nonin-strumental value of others which agents give and withdraw from eachother. The value of others is

disclosed,I have

suggested,in such

arrestingmoments as the horror over violence or in being grasped by the claim of

18 On the importance of authenticity as a moral ideal, see Charles Taylor, The Ethics ofAuthenticity Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).19Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p.242.

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Radical Interpretationlife in the face of a child. This explains the profound resentment, compas-sion, and also gratitude we have in such experiences. Moral conduct pre-

supposesconditions for action, such as the fact that we can evaluate what

we care about, but then insists that we recognize what is an end-in-itselfhas intrinsic worth, in all our actions despite what we might care aboutand value. A theory of moral agency must, therefore, include both theanalysis of the conditions for action, and thus what we care about, andalso respect as basic to moral conduct. These are not, as Taylor seems toargue, grafted onto each other. We do not begin with what we care aboutand then graft on to this a theory of respect and derivative norms ofjustice. Care and respect are equally basic sources of motivation simplybecause we human beings are always acting for ends we value and alsointeracting with others.20 In fact, this helps us understand the basic moraltension of our existence, the tension between what we care about andwhat claims our recognition and regard.

A condition for responsible human action is, then, some critical evalua-tion of the good or goods that ought to orient our lives. Human action isteleological; persons are, as William James said, fighters for ends. How-ever, we can isolate another kind of teleology which is basic to the morallife because we interact with others. In this

teleology,the end for which

an action is done is not a state of affairs to be realized, as in consequen-tialism, or, as Taylor argues, a good that orients action in terms of whatwe value. It is something that exists as an end in itself to be respected inall action.21 Here the concept of an end is bound to an actual, existingbeing or state of affairs rather than something to be achieved, sought, orrealized. It is an end insofar as the actual reality, the existent being orstate of affairs, is to be valued not simply as a means to some other pur-pose but in all actions. The dilemma of our moral lives, again, is that

these two ends can and do conflict in our lives. What we care about canand does conflict with our recognition and regard for others. When itdoes, we seek some reason for the moral life itself, and we also engage informs of moral self-criticism about what we ought to care about and re-spect. Theologically speaking, this is the experience of the terrified con-science or the divided self. Insofar as all of us actually experience thisform of moral conflict, then self-criticism would seem to be required inthe moral life.

On this account, the aim of moral self-criticism, as opposed to the form

20 On this, see Paul Ricoeur, Soi-meme ommeun autre. Also see William Schweiker, Imagi-nation, Violence and Hope: A Theological Response to Ricoeur's Moral Philosophy, inMeanings in Texts and Actions: Questioning Paul Ricoeur, ed. David E. Klemm and WilliamSchweiker (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), pp. 205-25.

21 For a helpful discussion of this point, see Donagan, The Theory of Morality, esp. pp.57-66.

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of self-questioning Taylor highlights, is to make the principle of distinc-tively human action, that is, what we care about, the claim to respect the

worth of others and ourselves. The morally good person or communityis one that cares about what ought to be respected. This is, I judge, whatChristian faith means by love; agape is the bestowal, the gift, of care basedon the recognition of and regard for the worth of what is other thanourselves. This means that any apprehension of the worth of existencewhich binds the self to its cause is implicitly an expression of this form oflove. And it also means that the root experience of responsibility is onein which there is a confluence of care and respect in response to finitegoodness. Thus, if we are to speak of moral self-criticism in theologicalethics, we need to explore how it is that what we care about as the basiccondition for distinctively human action is transformed in light of whatwe ought to respect.

What I am calling radical interpretation is reflective, critical inquiryaimed at the question of what has constituted our lives in terms of whatwe care about and what ought to guide our lives under the demand ofrespect for others. Such inquiry becomes radical when it strikes at theroots of who we are, what we most deeply care about and respect, andthe

conceptualframeworks or moral

descriptionswe have used to under-

stand ourselves and our world. Radical interpretation is, then, a way toarticulate how moral identity is constituted and transformed through anact of understanding. This means that what instigates the moral life is asense of the value of existence and an act of understanding rather thansimply evaluation. We do not merely evaluate the moral worth of othersin terms of our interests; we understand the moral life and what we careabout in terms of the experience of the recognition and regard for others.What I call radical interpretation is, then, the activity of moral self-

criticism in which a condition of our very acting, what we care about, istransformed through the recognition of a good that grounds the morallife and ought to be respected in all our actions.

There are specific theological reasons for adopting the idea of radicalinterpretation as central to a theory of moral responsibility. In the biblicaltexts, the Hebrew prophets called Israel to engage in this kind of inter-pretation through repentance and the remembrance of the covenant andGod's fidelity. Israel becomes Israel through remembering and living outthe covenant as definitive of its identity rather than

followingfalse

gods.The teachings of Jesus confront the reader with the same demand aboutthe reign of God. When Jesus asks, Who do you say I am? he forceshis listener to undertake this activity. The self is radically interpreted inresponse to the demand for some answer to Jesus' question. That answeris to be a description; it is a claim about who Jesus actually, not potentially,is as the Christ. The description entails a prescription. If Jesus is the

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Christ, then one ought to follow him.22 The idea of radical interpretationis also, I suggest, how we must understand the divine name in the biblicaltexts. The biblical

testimonyis that God names God's self and in

doing soconstitutes the identity of the community and the norms for fidelity,norms of justice and mercy. What is the ethical import of these forms ofradical interpretation?

On this point Taylor makes a suggestive but undeveloped proposal. Heargues that in order to warrant our adherence to the norms of justiceand benevolence present in our moral tradition, we must, surprisinglyenough, draw on the biblical claim, in Genesis 1, that God saw that itwas good. In other words, one must apprehend the noninstrumental

worth of others as ends in themselves if moral norms are to be genuinelycompelling and thus guide actual conduct. And thus Taylor asks, Do wehave ways of seeing-good which are still credible to us, which are power-ful enough to sustain these standards [ofjustice and benevolence]? 23 Ina word, the recognition of and regard for an end which solicits our re-spect must ground other moral beliefs and norms because it instigatesthe moral life, the concern to consider the well-being of others in evaluat-ing what we care about. Taylor argues, if I understand him rightly, thatthe endorsement of the worth of existence which

groundsthe moral life

is at least implicitly theological in character.On reaching this conclusion, we are at the transition point between an

account of the nature of moral agents and a theory of norms for responsi-bility. Taylor's work has helped us with one side of our inquiry even as itnecessarily leads to the other. It does so, interestingly enough, in termsof theological discourse and our basic experiences of value. Given this, Iwant to turn to a theory of moral norms for an age that has witnessed therise of human power through technology by examining the work of Hans

Jonas. And here too we will see that theological matters are entailed in atheory of responsibility precisely with respect to recognizing the worth ofexistence. Indeed, Jonas's position will lead us back to the topic of moralunderstanding while posing problems for further theological reflection.

POWER AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

For Hans Jonas, modern technology is an ontological event in history; ithas changed the nature of human action.

Technologyso extends human

power that the future is under our control and therefore also our respon-sibility. This development is concomitant with the modern reduction of

22 For a discussion of this point, see Robert P. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following:Christology nd the Ecstatic I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).23 Taylor, Sources of the Self (n. 12 above), p. 517.

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the human place in reality to one more fact n the causal world. Modernself-understanding denies that human beings are created in the image of

God. As Jonas puts it, The paradox of the modern condition is that thisreduction of man's stature, the utter humbling of his metaphysical pride,goes hand in hand with his promotion to quasi-God-like privilege andpower. The emphasis is on power. 24 Technology is simply the working outof this shift from the intrinsic worth of human life as the image of God tothe exercise of power. The loss of religious faith in the modern world asgrounding the moral life along with the change in the nature of actioncreates a space of virtually unlimited human responsibility for life on thisplanet.25 In Jonas's judgment, this fact moves the question of responsibil-ity to the center of ethics.

Jonas begins to develop an ethic of responsibility for a technologicalage with a claim about freedom rather than, as with Taylor, the problemof self-understanding. As a condition for moral action, freedom is bestunderstood as the self-affirmation of life against death. This is because,as he writes, in every purpose being declares itself for itself against noth-ingness. 26 Moral freedom emerges in the biosphere because of the ca-pacity of human beings to differentiate themselves from their environ-ment and make choices about how to act. Human

freedom is a uniqueexpression of the basic fact of purposiveness; freedom introduces com-plexity and increased contingency into the world, but it also entails anaffirmation of life. Since we now have the power to end life on this planet,it is vitally important that human beings take responsibility for the contin-gency their actions have introduced into the world. Given this demand,human beings must continue to exist.

Based on this argument, Jonas formulates an imperative of responsibil-ity for our age: Do not compromise the conditions for an indefinite con-tinuation of humanity on earth. 27 This means that we are not respon-sible to the future human individuals but to the idea of Man, which is

24 Hans Jonas, Contemporary Problems in Ethics from a Jewish Perspective, in his Philo-sophical Essays: From Ancient Creed o TechnologicalMan (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1974), p. 172.

25 See Hans Jonas, The Concept of God after Auschwitz: AJewish Voice, Journal of Reli-gion 67, no. 1 (1987): 1-13.

26 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: n Search of an Ethic for the Technological ge,trans. Hans Jonas and David Herr(Chicago: University

ofChicago

Press,1984), p.

81. ForJonas's metaphysics, see his The Phenomenon of Life: Towards Metaphysical Biology (Chicago:Midway, 1982). Also see Strachan Donnelley, Whitehead and Hans Jonas: Organism, Cau-sality, and Perception, International Philosophical Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1979): 301-15; andT. A. Goudge, Existentialism and Biology, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 5, no. 4(1967): 603-8. For a critical response to Jonas's ethics from the perspective of discourseethics, see Karl-Otto Apel, Diskurs und Verantwortung: as Problem es Ubergangs urpostkonven-tionellen Moral (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp. 179-218.27Jonas, The Imperative f Responsibility, . 11.

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such that it demands the presence of its embodiment in the world. 28Theidea of Man, the idea that humanity is an end-in-itself, is to guide actionbecause it

specifieswhat

oughtto be embodied in the world. The idea

ofMan articulates a reality that ought to be respected and actualized re-gardless of what we happen to care about. If one grasps the meaning ofthis idea, then one understands that it must be embodied. This is, wemight say, Jonas's ontological proof that the humanity ought to exist. Ifwe understand this idea, we do not know that humanity exists (as in thecase of the ontological proof of God's existence) but, rather, that humansought to exist. The proof is practical and prescriptive rather than theoreti-cal and descriptive in character; it concerns norms and prescriptions for

human action. The idea of Man, we can say, specifies the end which oughtto be respected in all action, that is, the conditions necessary for the con-tinuation of human life on earth.

Granting the presence of human life in the biosphere, how is the im-perative that there ought to be finite life in the future actually known inthe present so that this knowledge might move us to sacrifice presentinterests for future well-being? That is, how is it that our self-understanding can be transformed so that we recognize that future gen-erations of human life make a claim on our

presentconduct? This is the

inverse of the problem faced by Taylor; Jonas must specify how we aremoved to care about what we ought to respect. And in order to answerthis problem, Jonas begins with how the imperative of responsibility isknown. He argues that a 'command' can issue not only from a com-manding will, for instance, of a personal God or a Thou, but also fromthe immanent claim of a good-in-itself to its realization. 29There are cer-tain ends, goods to be respected, which also demand their realization.For Jonas, this kind of end is paradigmatically seen in the face of the

child. In a child we see what simply ought to be embodied. In every actof procreation human beings affirm, at least implicitly, the value of con-tinued existence. The imperative of responsibility rests, then, on the in-sight that for human life to exist is good. This designates the objectivecharacter of the norm of responsibility; it is not reducible to subjectivewants and preferences. The moral imperative is universalized throughthe idea of Man; humanity itself, and not specific individuals or groups,ought to be realized.

This objective norm must also be related to a subjective motive to act.

28 Ibid., p. 43. See also James M. Gustafson, Theology and Ethics: An Interpretation ofthe Agenda, and Hans Jonas, Response to James M. Gustafson, both in Knowing andValuing: The Search for Common Roots, ed. H. Tristain Engelhardt, Jr., and Daniel Callahan(New York: Institute for Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences, Hasting Center, 1980), pp.181-217.

29Jonas, The Imperative f Responsibility, . 79.

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A moral norm is irrelevant if it does not move agents freely to live by it.In order to move agents to act on the moral imperative, being itself, Jonas

contends, must be the cause and the object of reverence. We must havesome recognition or sense of the goodness of being which moves us tolive by the moral law. So, Jonas writes, Being (or instances of it) disclosedto a sight not blocked by selfishness or dimmed by dullness, may wellinstill reverence-and can with this affection of our feeling come to theaid of the, otherwise powerless, moral law which bids us to honor theintrinsic claim of Being. 30 Jonas's claim is that perishable existence isthe object of the feeling of responsibility. This is his version of what Ihave called the experience of responsibility. This feeling, Jonas holds,manifests the intrinsic claim of being on us in terms of what we careabout. While this claim is heard at the level of feeling, it can moveagents to act on the moral law formulated in the imperative of responsi-bility. This feeling, accordingly, is not an irrational sensation; rather, itis a sense of responsibility basic to understanding the world and humanlife in moral terms.

The plausibility ofJonas's ethics depends, then, on the assumption thatbeing does in fact evoke reverence and binds us through the feeling of

responsibilityto live

bythe moral

law. And there is the difficulty. Anyrealistic ethics must insist that agents are in fact selfish and our moralsensibility and perceptions are deeply distorted. As I previously noted,what we care about and what we ought to respect can and do conflict.Jonas recognizes part of the problem. Granting the fact of selfishness, heholds that one must appeal to fear, to imagined malum, and not to awe orreverence as crucial for moving people to care for the future. The threatof extinction, nonbeing, motivates a free affirmation of life and care forthe future of life. Moral motive is born of self-interest in the face of thethreat to finite future life. Fear instigates the transformation of our moralunderstanding.

There are reasons to question this Hobbesian claim about fear as moralmotive. This form of fear would actually seem to be the experience of thethreat to the felt worth of existence and thus dependent on that feelingof value rather than the fear of its loss. Be that as it may, the point I wishto make is that if the idea of Man is to determine the will because it tellsus what ought to be realized, then this idea itself must not dull our rever-ence for

beingas basic to moral action. It must enable

us,as

Taylor putsit, to see-good. But the idea of Man can do so only if it draws on themoral force of something not threatened by the negative and which dis-closes the worth of existence. Moral insight must be mediated by some

30 Ibid., pp. 89-90.

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idea, symbol, event, or name other than the idea of Man since, on Jonas'sown admission, this idea rests for its binding force on some claim about

being.On

seeing this,we return to the

other side of our inquiry. That is,we return to the problem of how we are to understand ourselves as moralbeings with respect to some insight into the goodness of existence.

Based on this examination of the work of Jonas and Taylor, we canconclude that contemporary ethics is in search of a theory of responsibil-ity which addresses the problem of moral blindness and the reality ofpower without regressing simply to our inchoate sense of what is im-portant to us or denying our experience of value. We need an ethics ofself-criticism concerned with the dignity and freedom of persons which

can also detail the idea, event, or reality which will universalize an imper-ative of responsibility so that we care about and dedicate ourselves to thefuture of all life on this planet. This ethic must refine, correct, anddeepen our untutored experiences of the worth of reality and also formu-late an imperative for action. And it must do so, it seems to me, withoutappeal simply to fear, which is the inverse of the experience of respect,or our inchoate sense of importance, that is, care, as the sole reasonsfor moral commitment. Let me conclude the inquiry by turning to thesematters and

thereby drawing togetherthe strands of

my argument.

RADICAL INTERPRETATION AND THEOLOGICAL ETHICS

I have explored how Taylor's theory of moral identity refashions our ideaof moral autonomy in terms of the evaluation of what we care about. Hisargument rightly defines moral freedom with regard to the traditionswhich have formed our moral sensibility without thereby compromisingthe degree of autonomy needed for the moral life. And I have also shown

how norms for the exercise of human power entail for Jonas some experi-ence of an end that commands respect and ought to be realized in ouractions. The norms of responsibility, according to Jonas, are socially me-diated and yet find their warrant and purpose not simply in social prac-tices of praise and blame but in a claim about what ought to exist in thefuture. The question before us now is the link between these two sides ofour inquiry, that is, the account of the nature of moral agents as self-interpreting animals and a theory of moral norms based on the interrela-tion of care and respect in the moral life.

The answer to that question, I hold, is the activity of radical interpreta-tion undertaken from a distinctively theological point of view. The possi-bility of this answer arises from what we have isolated by exploring theworks of Taylor and Jonas. What prompts us to step back and questionourselves, what instigates moral self-criticism and transformation, is notsimply what is important to us or even fear; it is what solicits our care

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and respect through its claim to exist, its intrinsic worth. This is, I submit,the founding experience of responsibility. Jonas and Taylor are each led

to acknowledge this experience. We have, then, isolated a point of contactbetween reflection on moral identity and the question of norms for theexercise of power in an experience of the value of finite life which solicitsour respect and empowers the enhancement of life. The moral person orcommunity is one whose self-understanding and conduct are defined bythis experience; moral norms formulate principles of choice with respectto it.

Significantly, for the thinkers we have explored, any attempt to specifythis basic experience of responsibility entails implicit or explicit theologi-cal claims. Taylor insists that the divine affirms the creature as good andthereby grounds the demands ofjustice and benevolence. God's percep-tion of value is constitutive of value, a seeing which also helps effectwhat it sees. Thus, the goodness of the world is not something quiteindependent from God's seeing it as good. His seeing it as good, lovingit, can be conceived not simply as a response to what it is, but as whatmakes it as such. 3' In our situation, we must, Taylor holds, act in a simi-lar way; we must not only respond to the good but also make it. Jonas

arguesthat the idea of creation can

take the form of reverence or certaininviolable integrities sanctioned by that idea. 32 Reverence is the feelingcorrelate to the idea of creation. Rather than insisting on the divine evalu-ation of creation (Taylor) or the idea of creation (Jonas) and the reverenceit might evoke, I want to propose a different and perhaps more radicaltheological claim. My argument, unlike Taylor's, does not use theologicaldiscourse to back our sense of what is important and warrant our own

making good. And contrary to Jonas, the idea of God is not employedsimply in order to universalize the basic moral imperative. Rather, I amconcerned with a claim about the character of the reality to which we areresponding interpreted from a theological point of view, and how thisinterpretation transforms one's moral sensibilities and sense of responsi-bility. The task at this juncture in my argument is, then, to show howtheological ethics can articulate the basic experience of responsibility andprovide a more adequate theory of responsibility than the positions wehave examined. If this can be shown, then the validity of this distinctivetheological perspective in ethics will have been dialectically established

grantingthat other

questionsand rival

positionsstill need to be

ad-dressed.The act of radical interpretation is the primal deed of authentic moral

identity. This is because it constitutes the self-understanding and moral

s3 Taylor, Sources of the Self p. 449.32Jonas, Contemporary Problems in Ethics from a Jewish Perspective, p. 179.

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sensibility of an agent, or community of agents, who exercise power interms of the claim of others and the world upon the agent. Radical inter-

pretation is an expression of moral freedom since it informs and directschoices based on the critical assessment of value orientations with regardto a response to what solicits respect. This enables us to affirm the degreeof moral autonomy needed for the moral life. We can and must criticallytest our value orientations and endorse only those that meet the test ofinterpretation. That is what it means to be responsible for ourselves. Theidea of radical interpretation makes moral transformation, or self-revision as Taylor presents it, into an epistemological principle in ethics.Moral knowledge is a process of transforming self-understanding out of

care and respect for others; it is to see others as good, as ends-in-themselves, as this entails the demand to realize life in others and our-selves. The authentic moral life is nothing less than the ongoing transfor-mation of self-understanding and conduct through the refinement ofmoral experience and sensibility.

However, if we are to specify the demands of moral responsibility, wemust assess our actions and values by some idea or symbol which rendersthe recognition of the value of existence into an imperative for action.This

requiresnot

only refiningmoral

experiencein the face of its

fragilityand distortion but also defining a principle of choice. Radical interpreta-tion, I have argued, enables us to articulate how the critical process of self-assessment takes place and thus constitutes moral identity. However, itdoes not of itself provide an imperative for action consistent with thisexperience and self-understanding. Does the idea of Man formulate theimperative of responsibility, as Jonas holds? Is it, as Taylor claims, whatwe hold decisive for us? Maybe it is the idea of an ideal discourse commu-nity, as theorists like Jiirgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel argue? In this

light, can we make sense of the Christian claim that we are to know andto love others and ourselves in God?In the Christian tradition, ultimate power as it evokes gratitude and

reverence is identified as God with respect to the recognition of thefinite other as well as norms of justice and benevolence. God not onlysees and makes good; God respects the reality of finite, nondivine exis-tence. God is the creator of the moral order of reality insofar as the mys-tery that is ultimate power names itself with respect to the goodness ofcreation, the demands of covenant fidelity and justice, and the redemp-tive power of love. Outside of this name and the history of interpretationit entails, the meaning of the ultimate reality is the abyss of power. Buttheological ethics does not take that fact as the central datum for a con-strual of the world. In other words, for the Christian tradition, God isthe name for the self-interpretation of ultimate reality in which power istransformed in recognition of and care for finite existence. Who God

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is, the divine identity, is interpreted with respect to specific values andnorms: God is creator, sustainer, and redeemer. The name of God entails

then a specific construal of the world which expands the scope of ourmoral community. Given this claim about the divine identity, the require-ment placed on us as moral beings is first and foremost to endorse asconstitutive of our own identity the subjection of power to norms ofwell-being.

The importance of this theological claim about the divine identity andwhat it means for self-understanding and a construal of the world shouldnot be quickly dismissed. The pervasive assumption of the Western moraltradition is that the human good is not to be found, as Nietzsche argued,simply in the release of power and thus the domination of the weak bythe strong, but in the exercise of human capacities with respect to specificmoral norms.33 This belief, articulated, we might note, in our obsessionwith the idea of responsibility, grounds a sense of human dignity and alsothe insistence on justice and mercy in social life. These commitments ba-sic to our culture signal the transformative power of the divine name onmoral consciousness whether or not the religious commitment it entailsis rendered explicit.34 If we were to excise completely from our moral

outlook this notion of the divine name, or some functional equivalentto it, and its ongoing transformative power on our moral discourse andsensibility, there is reason to believe that the sheer release of power wouldindeed define the human good. As Nietzsche saw in advocating thisagenda, it is extremely difficult to imagine what our world would be likein light of such a transvaluation of values. My contention is that no viablehuman world worthy of our commitment would in fact be possible. Worldmaking, like becoming a self, entails the binding of power to a recognitionof and care for finite existence and its future. This is the truth of theChristian theological perspective on the nature of reality expressed in thesymbol of creation. Given this, explicit faith is the commitment and voli-tion to understand reality and ourselves with respect to a trust in andloyalty to God. Theological ethics must specify what this faith means forhow we should live, realizing that in doing so it clarifies the human sig-nificance of Christian belief and also the affirmation of life basic to ourcultural existence.

33 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy nd the Genealogy of Morals, trans. FrancisGilffing (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1956).34My argument here is analogous to that of Karl Rahner on the presence of the symbolGod in Western thought. Rahner argues that the presence of this symbol in our culturesignals the openness of human life to a horizon of absolute mystery. I am arguing that thepresence of the name of God in our culture grounds a belief that the exercise of poweritself is not the human good. See Karl Rahner, Grace in Freedom New York: Herder &Herder, 1969), esp. pp. 183-203.

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This argument for responsibility departs from Taylor's position since itdoes not appeal to a divine evaluation of reality for the grounding ofmoral norms

but, rather,to the norms for

powerendorsed in the

divinename as fundamental to moral understanding and commitment. Theidea of radical interpretation in a theological context means that what isimportant about theistic claims is that ultimate power binds its identity tospecific moral norms of justice and mercy in world making, in creation.My argument also departs from Jonas's work since it provides the meansto address moral blindness while affirming an experience of the goodnessof being. What mediates moral insight, and thus moral understanding, isnot an idea of what ought to be reverenced in all action, but a name

which articulates the transformation of power through the recognition ofthe claim of finite goodness to exist in the creation of the world and theconstitution of identity. This entails, I am suggesting, understanding ourlives in terms of a commitment to respect and enhance the conditions forany morally viable world at all. Our insight into the worth of others ismediated through an understanding of the name of God insofar as thatname is the radical interpretation of ultimate power. The name of God isto enable a truthful insight into what is to be respected and realizedthrough an interpretative activity which transforms moral self-under-standing.35 This is how, I contend, we must understand the Christianclaim that we are to love ourselves and others in God. Given this, anyconstrual of the divine which fails to deepen and even instigate the in-sight into the worth of existence definitive of moral understanding so asto empower the moral life cannot claim ethical or theological validity.

The interpretation of the name of God within moral inquiry is criticallyto form our experience of reality and others and thus to determine moralidentity by transforming care and respect. This transformation of our

most basic moral sensibilities can be formulated ethically in two wayswhich bear on the actual conduct of life. First, it can be formulated interms of what is sometimes called the first precept of practical reason,seek good and avoid evil. This precept concerns a condition for distinc-tively human action, that is, what we care about. Interpreted through thename of God, this precept means that the condition for responsible actionis seeking to enhance and realize finite life and to avoid its destruction.Second, the experience that characterizes moral understanding can beformulated in a precept of moral responsibility itself: in all our actionsand relations we ought to respect, even reverence, life in relation to God.The principles for moral character and conduct center then on a recogni-

35 For a discussion of the activity of understanding, see William Schweiker, Mimetic Reflec-tions: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology, and Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press,1990).

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tion of the claims of others on us (justice) and an active concern for othersand the world (benevolence). These are general norms of responsibility

consistent with the relation of respect and care as forms of moral sensibil-ity when respect, as recognition of the other, and care, as a condition foraction, are radically interpreted from a theological point of view. Theimperative of responsibility is, then, this: in all actions and relations weare to respect and enhance the integrity of life before God. This impera-tive is applicable for determining valid theological claims as well. Faiththat is not active in love is not valid faith.

I have, then, specified in theological terms the point of contact betweenclaims about moral identity and norms for power in a technological age.The basic experience of responsibility is a response to the worth of con-tingent life which solicits respect and even care. Radical interpretation asthe activity basic to moral responsibility is how the self-understanding ofagents who exercise power is transformed in order to respect and en-hance the integrity of life by correcting and deepening our naive experi-ences of values. An ethics of responsibility, then, is realistic even as it in-sists on the centrality of one's unique freedom to interpret who one is asbasic to the moral life.

Radicalinterpretation

undertakentheologically aims at enabling us tointerrelate in ethics an account of the nature of moral agents and a theory

of moral norms. It provides the conceptual means to articulate how moralnorms become constitutive of moral identity and empower a way of life.The activity of radical interpretation does so insofar as it provides themeans for agents, or communities of agents, to assess and to transformtheir self-understanding with regard to what they care about and the ex-perience of respect. This means that the experience of the goodness towhich we ought to respond is a mediated insight; it is achieved by inter-preting theologically ourselves and our world. To interpret our lives andour world in this way expands the scope of our moral community andthus also deepens and expands our moral identity and freedom. It is tounderstand ourselves and all others within an inclusive moral communitywhose defining principle is the transformation of power with respect tothe recognition, regard, and enhancement of finite life. This inclusivecommunity of creation is what theologians call the reign of God. Thus,we are to understand and value ourselves and others as participants inthe

realitydefined

bythe name or

identityof God.

CONCLUSION

I have sought in this essay to clarify the current discussion of responsibil-ity with respect to the questions of moral agency and the norms of humanpower. The position I have proposed attempts to answer problems in

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other ethical theories, specifically those of Taylor and Jonas, while alsoaccounting for their concerns about moral self-evaluation and a commit-ment to future life on this

planet. My proposalfor an ethics of

responsibil-ity is also nothing less than a radical interpretation of Christian faith andthe moral identity it engenders. This theological ethics articulates faith inthe form of moral understanding; it specifies faith as active in a distinctiveway of being moral in the world through respect and care. The morallife, theologically construed, is about binding our power to norms ofjus-tice and benevolence in order to foster viable life by interpreting exis-tence through the name of God.

The theological ethical task of radical interpretation is an act of free-

dom with respect to who we are and what we ought to become. It is toenable us to understand ourselves and the moral order in which we existas constituted not only by our moral traditions or our participation in thebiosphere but in response to the God who endows reality with worth andsolicits our responsibility. Radical interpretation within a theological per-spective is the enactment of the freedom to know and value others andourselves in God for the sake of the integrity of life.

1993, oct, radical interpretation and moral responsibility a proposal for theological ethics

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