The superior truth in question here, the truth of my conduct (including my theōrein and therefore the condition on which my assertions are assertions of truth), the truth of my life and existence is the truth of the good. All general or theoretical truth, from the truth that two and two make four to the boldest achievable knowledge of higher worlds,2 and no matter how clear and certain they may be in themselves, stand in the brackets of the question whether my life and therefore my action and therefore my theōrein has a part in the truth of a basically different and higher order, in the truth of the good. They thus stand in the brackets of the ethical question. It is so much a matter of the truth of another order that the inquiry which it implies in relation to the bracketed general and theoretical truths does not relate to their content (how two and two make four or how it stands with the final question that is directed to me as the one who asserts this truth). It is so much a matter of another order that a removal of the brackets in the sense of a general and theoretical answer to the question, in the sense of an extension of our general and theoretical knowledge by knowledge of this supreme truth is ruled out in advance. From the very outset those who deal with it with this in view deal with it in vain. With what right, however, do we refer here to the truth of a higher order? Because at best all general and theoretical truth cannot be more than clearly and certainly asserted being. But all being—no clear and certain assertion can evade this condition, as is most evident in the case of mathematics as perhaps the clearest and most certain of all the sciences—all being, as true being, as ontos einai,3 if we are not content merely to assert it, is not grounded in itself but in a hypothesis or presupposition of being which itself, if the same question is not to repeat itself ad infinitum, cannot be thought of as being but only as not being, cannot be thought of as the beginning or source or mother-ground of being but only as its negation and position, as the pure origin of its being which as that of Creator to creature stands in no continuity with it and which cannot possibly be sought on the level of general and theoretical, mathematical and physical, historical and psychological, or metaphysical and metapsychological truths, on the empirical or the speculative way. If it is sought there, no matter how sublimely, something other will always be found, perhaps another theoretical and general truth, but another truth which, significant though it may be, and absolute though it may be in our own thinking, is still a truth of being which stands in the same need of regress, of validation by another criterion, as all other truths of being, all other truths sought and found at this point. |
The question of origin shows itself to be such, to be the question of truth in truth, of superior, unconditional truth, not by the fact that we ascribe to its object this character of general and theoretical absoluteness—for in so doing we should admit that we do not know what we are about and show how unattainable this superiority is—but by the fact that it is understood as the question that is primarily put by the object to us, to our action, and undoubtedly to our theōrein, though not to a theōrein abstracted from our existence as contemplation, but to our existential theōrein, and beyond that to the fact of our existence in general, to our life-act. We are asking about the unconditional when we ask unconditionally as we do not do in general and theoretical asking, i.e., when our asking expresses the basic acknowledgment that we are asked. We see it as the question of the origin that precedes all being when we see it as being prior in order to the questions of our general and theoretical thinking. But we see it as being genuinely prior in order to these questions when we do not see it as our question—as such it could only be general and theoretical again—but when we understand and accept it as the question that is put to us, as the question which we cannot answer incidentally from the safe harbor of our self-consciousness as spectators of our own life, but which we can, which, indeed, whether we like it or not, we must answer only with our life itself, to which our whole active life and each of our individual acts, whatever it may be, must be viewed as the answer, in relation to which our whole existence takes on the character of answerability. The very thing, then, which general and theoretical thinking as such would rather hurry past, my very existence as an individual, as this or that person, the very subjectivity of my conduct, becomes important, becomes the important thing, the only important thing, when it is a matter of the unique knowledge of the unique truth of origin. It becomes important because this truth applies to me and at every moment I have to understand my existence in relation to it as responsibility and decision, whether the decision be for it or against it or be left open. It is decision and as such the revelation of this truth to us for good or ill. Knowledge of the good occurs as we do it or not. Ethics is understanding of the good, not as it is known to us as a general and theoretical truth, but insofar as it reveals itself to us in our doing of it or not, insofar as the concrete reality of our life-situation is decision for or against it. All ethics which tries to look beyond this revelation of the good in our own decision, this active revelation, to a being of the good or a goodness of being, and which tries to define good actions and duties and virtues on this basis, might in some circumstances kindle our interest in the same way as higher physics or metaphysics; but beyond what it can itself achieve it would at once make necessary an authentic ethics which has to ask about the origin of this being of the good or this good being, and to do so in relation to our own decision, to our existence in decision. |
The ethical problem is not a problem, i.e., not a general theoretical question to which a general theoretical answer can be given. The reality of ethical science—science presupposes the possibility of common knowledge—makes sense only when there is fellowship in this supremely special knowledge, a knowledge of the good which reveals itself for good or ill in our decision. Thus theological as well as philosophical ethics—the former directly, the latter, as we have seen, indirectly—presupposes the church, the church as the place where the common presupposition is the givenness of the question of unconditional truth that is put to man, and therefore the fact that man is questioned, and therefore the revelation of this truth in his existential decision. The truth is the fellowship of individuals precisely in and not in spite of their individuality, the particularity in which the good is known here. |
On the presupposition of the church, on whose basis alone ethical knowledge is possible, what is thought and said in common about the ethical problem cannot consist of its recognition as a problem, of making it general and theoretical, of treating it as one of the many human questions, of treating the answer to it as an evident truth. It can only aim at showing us how far the meaning of our life-situation, of the wholly unproblematical reality of our existence, can be the revelation, the becoming evident, of the good. This becoming evident of the good in the reality of our own existence is the divine act of sanctification. It is the thing from which we must not abstract in any way if we are to pursue theological ethics and not theological physics. The latter would happen if the extension of our general and theoretical knowledge were secretly or openly to control our ethical inquiry, if we were to ask about the unconditioned without wanting to ask unconditionally, i.e., with the strictest attention to our being asked, if we were to try to deduce what being ought to be from being itself, if we were thus to try to understand God as the supreme being instead of in the way that he reveals himself, i.e., in the act of his divine being. The place where God is revealed as the quintessence of the good, where the knowledge of God thus becomes the knowledge of the good or theological ethics, is the divine act of sanctification. It is thus the reality of our existence or our decision to the extent that in it, no matter how the decision may go, God has decided on our salvation.
As God sanctifies us, the truth becomes unconditioned special truth applying to you and me today and tomorrow, not the truth which I maintain but the truth which maintains itself over against me, which fulfills itself in me. We must not leave this place, or stop considering the answerability of our life-situation, if we are to know how far God’s command is real, how far, as we have been asking in this first section, it is revealed to us. It is revealed to us in the event of our own conduct understood as responsibility. We must now ask how far this is so.
2
The common formula for the ethical problem, and one which does justice to the depth of the matter, runs