Ethics. Karl Barth

We shall now consider whether we mean it seriously when we ask about what we should do. This again is not self-evident. The question: “What shall we do?” can also be a question of curiosity which does not have to be an ignoble curiosity. Practice, too, can legitimately become the subject of theoretical interest. This happens in psychology. And psychology is not in itself a disreputable matter. It becomes this, as happens, only when it confuses itself with ethics or even with theology. Ethics, ethical reflection as theoretical inquiry for the sake of inquiry, with no orientation to what ought to be done, is, of course, an impossibility. We cannot simply want to know what is good. One wants to know with a view to doing it or not doing it the very next moment, with reference to the total seriousness of the decision that has to be taken the very next moment. Hence one cannot learn to know the good merely in order to form a judgment about it or to take up an attitude toward it. Often enough we all of us seem to be asking about the good, but we only seem to be doing so. We ask: “What shall we do?”, but again like the rich young ruler we do so with certain practical presuppositions which we do not regard as open to question, which we are resolved not to give up in any circumstances, and in relation to which we would rather restrict our freedom. We have not thought of asking about that whose doing or nondoing will at once mean our salvation or damnation. We ask frequently and attentively but we really ask, not “what shall we do” but “what can we do.” We ask so as to supply material for the second question whether we will do anything at all or whether we would rather do this or that. This ethical investigation, which may sometimes be conducted very carefully, this abstract reflection and consultation with others, takes place under the proviso that we may take a very different view from that corresponding to the results of the investigation, and on the assumption that it does not finally matter much what view we take, it will probably be the everyday ethics familiar to everybody. Why should not this type of inquiry find its right and seriousness along the lines of psychological research? The only thing is that we must have no illusions about its theoretical character, about the fact that fundamentally it is not ethics, and that we must not exchange its seriousness for that event of the literally intended question: “What shall we do?”

      If we take this question literally, we do not have in mind what we might do after an intervening moment of free reflection but what we will in all circumstances do the very next moment—or what we will perhaps not do, but then under the whole judgment of nonfulfillment or transgression of the command. I have again no time at my disposal, no intervening moment, no neutral place in time where I might first consider the good in its being and take up an attitude toward it. I cannot put off the decisive decision, but it stands directly at the door. I know that I will now decisively decide. It is a matter of doing what I should. What I should, however, is the claim directed to me, not the good in essence but the good in act, the good that comes to me, in relation to which I must reply the very next moment and not the one after, in relation to which my next step will bring to light my adequacy or inadequacy. Asking what I should do, I know that it is not in my choice to give my act the character of decision but that whatever I do it always has this to my salvation or damnation, that my existence is the answer to the question, not a question that I put, but the question that is put to me. Here again, then, there is no room for the discussion of theoretical problems. If I ask what I should do, then I know that the very next moment I myself am the answer to this question. My putting of the question can again have only the point of making clear to me this situation of mine, of making me aware of the decisive character of the very next moment. Again, then, I have directed myself out of general and theoretical inquiry to the very practical reality of my decision. In it, in my doing or not doing of what I should do, I see the unconditioned truth that saves or judges me, the truth of the good. In it the revelation of the command takes place. If a purely theoretical interest in practice is forbidden me, if I can ask only with this seriousness, then that is a witness that this revelation has in fact taken place.

      d. We can now briefly investigate the seriousness of the question by means of the emphasis: “What shall we do?” When I as an individual put the ethical question in the plural, then if I mean what I obviously say I confess that by the responsibility which I have to accept in my decision I understand the measurement of my action by a claim that is not valid for me alone but universally valid. The crisis of the “what?”, the seriousness of the “ought,” the urgency of the deed would not be perceived and the whole question would clearly be something other than the ethical question if the “what shall we do?” were merely a rhetorical cloak for a secret “what shall I do?” For although the good, when it reveals itself, undoubtedly reveals itself to me, in the event of my conduct, not to a collective we, not in the form of a mass experience; although it undoubtedly comes to me questioning everything, making an imperious demand, pointing to the very next moment; although no other and no society can take from me my own responsibility, nevertheless I have no less indisputably failed to see and hear its presence if my ethical reflection does not take my real situation into account, if I am not fully clear that the individual element which is the goal and to which there is a summons, my naked existence, is again something that I do not have for myself alone but in fellowship with all men, and that the summons, even as it comes very directly and specifically to me, sets me materially in a series with all others, that it aims at me and reaches me not merely as this particular person but as man. A demand is made on me, not as a personality or individual, nor as a member of this or that natural or historical collective, but as man.

      Otherwise there would again be the threat that I might view the good as being, this time from the distance of my particularity, of my isolated case; that I might protect my individuality against the crisis in face of which there can be no assured “this,” against the seriousness for which the seriousness of my own special case is not really a match and over against the urgency which can know no distinctions between some people and others. There would again be the threat that I might make a conditioned truth out of unconditioned truth—a truth conditioned by my personal distinctiveness, by the special concerns which distinguish me from others. That unconditioned truth comes to me in a distinctive way, as it really does come to me, does not mean that I may treat it as conditioned by my distinctiveness. If it comes to me, I may not hide behind my distinctiveness but must confess that I am one among many others, simply man, so that my question—mine—can only run: “What shall we do?”—yes, in all the singularity of my person and case: “What shall we do?” If I seriously ask thus, I bear witness in so doing that I have given up the least possibility of trying to see the good as being, even this last and perhaps the most dangerous because the most natural and apparently the most honorable concealment. The “we” points to the inescapable decision which I must take—a decision which even my distinctiveness and that of my special case do not enable me to evade. In the very distinctiveness of my special case the command comes to man. It determines the special element in my special practical situation, whereas the assertion of my distinctiveness can only be again abstraction and theory. If I know this, if I know that everything depends on my doing or nondoing and not on whether I am this or that person, then I ask seriously: “What shall we do?” and I say therewith that I really know the command issued to me, that it revealed to me.

§5

       THE COMMAND AS THE COMMAND OF GOD

      The truth of the good that reveals itself in our conduct is the truth of the concretely given command which as such is the command of God.

      1

      We have shown in §4 how it is and must be with the revelation or knowledge of the truth of the good if there is such a thing, if the question: “What shall we do?” is seriously meant and put in all its parts. If there is such a thing—?! So long as we ask generally and theoretically whether there is such a thing, we can in fact only ask hypothetically. But the hypothesis ventured here is the thesis of the original unconditioned truth which, since it can appear only on the surface of general hypothetical thinking, indicates the limit of this thinking and also its own superiority. Hence the question whether there is such a thing cannot be answered generally and theoretically because, if it exists, it is not a general theoretical truth.