Theme

The relation of late modern culture to morality and ethics is filled with tension. On the one hand we see in the past decennia a constant advance of ethics, especially in relation to social sectors and professional practices (for example, bio-ethics, computer ethics and business ethics). Ethics has become professional in two senses: it is connected with a specific profession and it has become the business of specialists (often institutionalized in ethical committees and protocols). On the other hand, at least in Western culture, a powerful resentment is at work against the rehabilitation of an obligatory morality in public life. There is a wide mistrust, especially among intellectuals and in the media against (the restitution of) communally shared values and norms. Especially civic morality is the object of this criticism, a morality which is the result of a union between liberal Christianity and classical Humanism.

Symposium

An important aim of the symposium is to analyse the spiritual and philosophical roots of the above named tension and to search for a Christian-philosophical perspective which can offer a more reliable orientation. This analysis and search hold consecutively for the individual person, the various professional practices (and social institutions) as well as society as a whole.
The title of this symposium indicates that ethics can be pursued in three circles: the person, the (professional) practices and society as a whole, in which the person and the practice are imbedded. It is to be expected that the ambiguous attitude of late modern culture regarding morality and ethics will be found in each of these spheres. With regard to the person the moral ideal of authenticity, connected to the notion of ‘the art of living’ is still pretty powerful. However, the individualization of the person along with the claim of moral autonomy has made an appeal to values which transcend the person precarious and uncertain. When we look at the sphere of professional practices, it seems that ethics is especially concerned with particular cases and moral dilemmas while the primary processes, such as the production of goods in business, teaching in education, training and playing in sports, are considered morally neutral and a matter of technical control. Finally, Western society and especially its ethos or mentality is marked by a continuing moral sensibility. We only need to point to the great importance attached to human rights. At the same time this society manifests strong nihilistic tendencies (for example, in the unrestricted development of science, technology and economics, but also in the experience of emptiness and meaninglessness in art and in the boredom of personal lives).

Dilemmas

With regard to the plan of the Symposium we will now try to map out the above-named problem (the ambiguity with regard to morality and ethics in late modern culture) by means of four recognizable dilemmas.

1. Individual as opposed to collective morality. In Western societies there has been in the past decennia a powerful individualization of morals, often allied with a libertarian-nihilistic or multi-cultural ethos. In that connection one speaks of postmodern morality. The public domain has become impoverished from a moral point of view: juridical procedures legitimate a minimal moral response with values such as tolerance and respect. By way of reaction there has been recently a strong call to a restoration and rediscovery of communal (national? Western?) values and norms, but not in such a way that human self-reliance is questioned. This call concerns the moral cohesion of society, in Central and Eastern Europe especially about the construction and/or the maintenance of civil society. Focussing more on (professional) practices, there is increasing attention the past years for questions of integrity and codes for behaviour with a view to regulating acting professionally (in a communal way).

2. Personal morality as opposed to valid moral prescriptions. There is also an entirely different way of speaking of the individualization of morals: a higher value is attributed to a personal appropriation and education of moral convictions and prescriptions. Significant in this connection are terms like authenticity, culture of the self, self-construction of biography and the course of life. Morality has become more existential and therefore more interiorized. At the same time prescriptive (theological) ethics has come into a crisis. Traditional moral authorities (parents, ministers, doctors and teachers) are to an important extent being replaced by old (television) and new media (internet) as contemporary moral frames of reference. Something similar holds for the critical attitude towards the authority of values and norms: their validity has become problematic. Ethics taken as the application of general rules or abstract principles to concrete situations has come into a crisis. Probably the resentment against civil morality, which we mentioned above, plays a significant role here.

3. A rationalistic as opposed to an emotivistic foundation for ethics. The transition from modernism to postmodernism has dismantled the rational foundation of ethics, which ethics had gained in the project of the Enlightenment. Science no longer acts as the undisputed frame of reference for morality. An alternative reduction of moral convictions to intuitions or emotions runs up against the problem of a radical subjectivism, along with moral relativism in its wake. In so far as Christian ethics is based on a rational foundation, it participates in the crisis of modernity. However, the supra-individual character of Christian ethics does not allow for an emotive point of departure either. Do hermeneutical and narrative approaches offer an escape from this impasse?

4. Specialisation (fragmentisation) as opposed to the generally accessible character of ethics. The complexity of modern society has raised numerous new moral questions. This development is reflected in the rise of all kinds of professional ethics, usually connected with a specific practice, such as the hospital, the business or the mass media. Within these professions one finds a certain institutionalisation of moral reflection: codes of conduct and ethical committees are the most common examples. The specialisation of ethics to an ethics of a profession often also means a professional and scientific approach to the practice of ethics. Ethics runs the risk of being monopolized by experts who subsequently get the role of developing alibis for the professionals (managers, doctors, journalists. In many practices the ethics of the profession is (methodically) reduced to an analysis of special cases. As a result ethics becomes fragmentized. Does an analysis of the normative structure of the practice offer the possibility for a more integrated moral reflection, which does justice to the responsibility of all professional practitioners and, hence, of every citizen?

In sum one could point out that a rediscovery has taken place in contemporary ethics of the authentic acting person. This person finds herself in a situation which is on the one hand determined by the normative structure of the contexts in which she acts (social relations, practices) and on the other hand formed by the ethos of society at large. For the practice of ethics the emphasis on the person implies among other things the rehabilitation of (classical) virtue ethics.

Reformational philosophy

What does a Reformational philosophy have to say about the problem sketched above? Which points of contact are there among its adherents who are busy in the field of ethics to address themselves to issues involved? Does the program of a Christian philosophy offer any insights, such as the answering character of ethics (in a so-called ethics of responsibility), which may be made fruitful with regard to the theme? In answering these questions, Reformational philosophy itself needs to be questioned with regard to its own strong and weak points. In which areas of ethics has it gained important profits? Where are the shortcomings and even possibly the blind spots?
We will give a preliminary characterization of central contexts in which reformational philosophers (and theologians who sympathize with this philosophy) have been occupied with ethical subjects.

1. With regard to ontology: is ethics limited to the study of the moral aspect with its meaning kernel of love and care? Or must one take ethics in a broader sense, for example, as a reflection on the normative structure of (social) reality, more specifically, the normative structures of (professional) practices? How can a hermeneutical access be gained in this normative structure, taken as the law of God in creation? How does the universal relate to the particular (for example, a positivized normativity) in this context?

2. With regard to anthropology: can ethics be made fruitful when one takes the analysis of the normative structure of human acting as the point of departure, for example in the form of a praxeology? What would be the consequence of such an approach for the moral education of the individual person? Is a Reformational virtue ethics possible? What would such an ethics substantially look like? Are ethics and morality rooted in the religion of the human person? In which manner do they contribute to the knowledge and development of the human self?

3. With regard to philosophy of culture: what contribution does an understanding of the (religiously motivated) ethos of a culture have for a critical practice of (professional) ethics? How can a more global and more embracing analysis of culture contribute to the pursuit of ethics in specific (professional) practices and to the moral education of the individual person? Need the ethos be analysed in terms of the ground motives (religiously motivating forces) which lie behind it, or with the help of a concept of ideology or the notion of worldview or with some other term?

4. With regard to theological ethics: what is the significance of a reflection on the Kingdom of God for Christian morality and ethics? What profit can be gained from an ethics of obedience and command with regard to more common types of ethics, such as the ethics of duty and of virtue? In which manner can the theological ethics which is pursued in this way help in the radical nature of imitation in which justice is also done to such biblical notions as self-denial and the bearing of one’s cross (in contrast to the contemporary emphasis on the good religious and moral feeling)?

When we overlook the effort and elaboration of the ethical pursuits within Reformational philosophy, it is conspicuous that relatively little attention has been given to the epistemological side of ethics and also that little effort has gone into concrete moral problems, with the exception of the ethics of technology, business ethics and ethics of care. The strong points of Reformational philosophy are found especially in the analysis of the structure of human acting, the structure of social institutions (the state, technology, the media, science) and the interpretation of the ethos of modern society.

Plan of the Symposium

In order to realize that the conference will deal with a specific theme as worked out in this outline, its parts must be well chosen en finely attuned to each other. In order to promote these goals, we shall add to the traditional plan of plenary papers of invited speakers in the morning and parallel sessions of workshops in the afternoon, in which participants can present their thoughts, a new element, namely: panel discussions in which specific subjects can be raised, also by taking the clue from the plenary sessions. The themes of these panel discussions can be, for example, current ethical areas of society and culture, such as the medical area, media and ICT, business and politics, education and pedagogics. Here we can also engage the support (contentwise as well as financially) of organizations in these areas. It is possible that in the plenary papers important philosophical and historical questions are treated, such as, for example, the question of the authority of the norm over against human acting, given the emotivistic-nihilistic ethos of our culture. The relation between tradition and practice, between faith and professional practice, the anthropological deepening and other such subjects. Sometimes a given state of affairs will have to be described, sometimes an analysis has to be offered and sometimes a position will have to be defended.

Commitee IS2005