Toward an Ethics of Responsibility Author(s): Wolfgang Huber Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 73, No.

4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 573-591 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1204184 . Accessed: 09/01/2012 05:31
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Toward an Ethics of Responsibility*

WolfgangHuber
/
Universityof Heidelberg

Responsibility is not a new topic in moral enquiry. It has a firm place in the traditions foremost of English-speaking moral philosophy and theological ethics. The ordinary notion of responsibility in connection with the theory of free will and necessity is often discussed.' As a current definition of this kind of responsibility we can take the one proposed by Richard Swinburne: "An agent is held to be morally responsible for what he does intentionally, for what he chooses to do; for doing certain actions he is praiseworthy, for doing other actions he is blameworthy."2 There is still ongoing debate on the question whether such a notion of moral responsibility is compatible or incompatible with a deterministic understanding of human action.3 Most symposia and debates on responsibility have concentrated on the correlation of responsibility and freedom and have argued that responsibility is absent in the case of inevitability. Some contributors try to differentiate responsibility from virtue in such a way that they distinguish a responsible action from a virtuous character.4 Many efforts have been undertaken to discern moral responsibility from causal responsibility, on the one hand, and liability for punishment, on the other hand.5 We came to distinguish between the normal situation of role responsibility and the exceptional situation of vicarious responsibility or* This essay was prepared for the conference on "Realism and Responsibility in Contemporary Ethics" at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, February 28, 1992. I thank William Schweiker and Thorsten Schmitt for their helpful suggestions. SSee E H. Bradley, "The Vulgar Notion of Responsibility in Connection with the Theories of Free-Will and Necessity," in his Ethical Studies (1876; reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), pp. 1-57; Richard McKeon, "The Development and the Significance of the and Historyand OtherEssays (Chicago: University Concept of Responsibility," in his Freedom of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 62-87. and Atonement(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 34. 2 Richard Swinburne, Responsibility 3 See, e.g., Bernard Berofsky, Freedom Basis of Responsibility from Necessity:The Metaphysical (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987); or Bruce N. Waller, Freedom without Responsibility (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). See the contributions for the "Symposium on Moral Responsibility," Ethics 101 (1991): 4 236-321. 5 See the classic essays of Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving:Essaysin the Theory Responsiof bility (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978). @ 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/93/7304-0006$01 .00

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The Journal of Religion as I would call it-between having responsibility according to one's role in society and taking responsibility in cases of emergency or even of civil disobedience or resistance.6 But all those debates are characterized by their continuity with earlier moral theories. They do not reflect the specific problems and challenges that confront ethical reflection today. It seems to me that the first contribution of theological ethics to the ongoing debate consists in the explicit acknowledgment of and reflection on some specific characteristics of the present sociopolitical situation that demand a specific kind of ethical evaluation. I want to begin by considering three of these new challenges, which are interrelated: collective crimes of obedience, the globalization of modern technology, and the ambivalence of the project of modernity. Related to these challenges, the second part of the article will develop four structural dimensions of responsibility. These will be (1) the foundation in a relational anthropology, (2) the correspondence to reality, (3) the teleological character, and (4) the reflexive use of principles. Dealing with these four dimensions, I want to show how theological reflection can contribute to a constructive theory of responsibility appropriate to the challenges of our time.

It is often forgotten but has at least to be kept in mind by Germans that the most intense provocation for an ethics of responsibility in the twentieth century has to be found in the brutally planned and executed genocides and mass murders of our time. In memorializing the fiftieth anniversaries of some of these unimaginable events-for instance, the beginning of the German military aggression against the Soviet Union in June 1941 or the Wannsee conference, with its official approval of the socalled final solution of the Jewish question in January 1942-we realize that there are historical events that are not simply a part of the past but are always a part of our present. One of the moral questions related to the surprising process of German unification was whether and how a greater Germany could be constituted and could be involved actively in world politics in light of its responsibility for its history. But what does responsibility mean here? The question is not whether all Germans have a collective accountability for the crimes of the German past-the then-living generations as well as those who claim the "grace of late birth" (as the
6 On role responsibility, see H. L.A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 212.

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Ethics of Responsibility present German chancellor was once quoted). This question was discussed immediately after the end of the Second World War. Hannah Arendt as well as Karl Jaspers unfolded the insight that moral responsibility transcends the realm of individually accountable actions. It includes-as Jaspers pointed out-the coresponsibility of every human person "for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge."7 Obedience, conformity, and fear are the normal mechanisms by which people accept, tolerate passively, or even contribute actively to the harm done to others. Crimes of obedience are described and analyzed in an extraordinarily impressive, though depressing, manner by Herbert Kelman and Lee Hamilton as one of the general features of the past century.8 Their overwhelming examples could lead to a generalizing concept of responsibility as it was proposed by Arendt. She wrote: "The idea of humanity, when purged of all sentimentalities, has the very serious consequence that in one form or another men must assume responsibility for all crimes committed by men and that all nations share the onus of evil committed by all others. Shame at being a human being is the purely individual and still nonpolitical expression of this insight."9 However, this generalization has to be balanced by the reflection that the coresponsibility for earlier deeds-in its double form of anamnetic solidarity with the victims and of common efforts to avoid the repetition of comparable victimizations-is specified and differentiated according to our community memberships. Belonging to a Christian church, for instance, elicits a specific awareness with regard to a kind of racism (such as the apartheid politics in South Africa) that has been justified by its champions on Christian grounds. My citizenship as a German-to offer another example-took on a specific kind of responsibility when, during the Gulf War, Israel was threatened by a possible Iraqi attack using scud missiles that were equipped with German assistance. Past crimes result not only in a general and common coresponsibility of all humans but likewise in specific coresponsibilities of humans as members of smaller communities within humankind.
Karl Jaspers, The Questionof GermanGuilt (New York: Capricorn Books, 1947), p. 32. Herbert C. Kelman and Lee V. Hamilton, Crimesof Obedience: Toward Social Psychology a and Responsibility of Authority (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989). Five 9 Hannah Arendt, "Organized Guilt and Responsibility," in CollectiveResponsibility: Decadesof Debatein Theoretical AppliedEthics, ed. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman (Savage, and Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), pp. 273-83, quote on p. 282. A monograph by Larry May on the issue was just announced as I finished the essay: Larry May, SharingResponsibility (in press). There he will deal with the relationship between responsibility and communitymembership, as he did in his book The Morality of Groups:CollectiveResponsibility, Groupbased Harm, and CorporateRights (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).
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However, reflections on responsibility today are oriented toward the future more than the past. The globalization of modern technology is seen as the most dramatic challenge for an ethics of responsibility. The philosopher Hans Jonas most outspokenly formulated this connection. Jonas, of the New School for Social Research in New York, published his book first in German and translated it himself only five years later into English.'o Up to now his proposal has found more resonance in Germany than in the United States. For our purpose, Jonas's central argument can be summarized as follows: modern technology has equipped humans with an increase in power that is deeply ambivalent in its possible effects. It implies new opportunities for the preservation and development of human life as well as for its destruction. It includes the capacity for collective nuclear selfextermination as well as for a biotechnological self-manipulation of the human species. Nuclear fission and the breakup of the genetic code are the outstanding evidence for humankind's definite and irreversible disposition over its own future. That is why responsibility for the future of humankind forms an ultimate ethical imperative. The time structure of ethical reflection that is provoked by modern technology can be described more precisely than is usually done in connection with Jonas's argument. The dangers for human as well as nonhuman life, which result from our technological interventions into nature, are today often characterized by an intergenerational time lag. The causes for today's deep damage to forests in Central Europe have to be found in events of years and decades ago. In the case of the anthropogenic change of the global climate, the time gap between cause and effect is estimated to be three or four decades. Other injuries to the environment also show up with a certain time lag. But the anticipation of dangers in a distant future does not easily reorient human thinking and behavior. In the choice of present actions, people tend to react to present dangers rather than anticipate future dangers. For instance, people are worried by hurricanes they themselves experience rather than by the anticipation that a global warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius will create within forty years even worse weather dangers. But such a reactive mode of behavior is not sufficient. The question has to be posed whether humankind can develop an ability for collective anticipatory actions. That is what responsibility is about. There is still another reason that substantiates the future orientation
10 Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethikfiir die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1979). For his own translation, see Hans Jonas, TheImperative of In Responsibility: Searchof an Ethicsfor the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

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Ethics of Responsibility of contemporary ethics, that is, the exponential increase of the problems created by present activities. The most striking instance arises in the interaction between the structural injustices of global economic relationships and the growth of world population. With the dramatic increase of the global population and the continuous deterioration of the ratio between the rich minority and the poor majority, the extension and intensity of global poverty increasingly exceeds our imagination. Under such conditions we cannot imagine in realistic terms what respect for the rights of future generations might mean. As long as humanity follows the present path of technological and economic development on a global scale, it will increasingly experience a discrepancy between the life conditions it produces for the global majority and the notion that humans are free and therefore capable of responsibly shaping their own destiny. The ambivalence of technological and economic developments is only one aspect of the ambivalence of the project of modernity itself. On the one hand, the modern project, concentrated around the ideas of the dignity, autonomy, and freedom of the human subject, is not at all fulfilled and should not be given up. On the other hand, the anthropocentrism of modernity is basically challenged by the question whether humans alone are gifted with a specific dignity, or whether they participate in the dignity of all creatures, albeit in a specifically human manner. This is the ambivalence of modernity: the refusal of all forms of heteronomy and the proclamation of human autonomy. This is undoubtedly a real progress in comparison with those times in which external authorities-princes, bishops, or whoever else-decided deliberately about the destiny of human lives. And yet the process of modernization has led to the breakdown of lived traditions: the colonization of the life world by the systemic imperatives of a functional society, the dissolution of convivial forms of life, the indifference toward commonly shared norms, and a disintegration of those institutions that formerly provided guidance and orientation for the lives of individuals. This has political ramifications as well. The construction of a public sphere of open discourse and cultural exchange is one of the most important achievements of modernity. But the tendency toward a global monoculture fostered by mass media and mass consumption, by the international communication system and internationalized economic interests, is self-destructive. A global monoculture will in the end be no culture at all. The "dialectics of enlightenment" can be regarded from two sides: as the way out of a rather unenlightened past or as the way into a rather unenlightened future. Social development in highly industrialized countries is to a high degree characterized by an individualization of lifestyles. This statement is not at all a contradiction to our reflection on monoculture-on the contrary. The individualization of lifestyles reflects a situation in which 577

The Journal of Religion people are confronted with a plurality of options for the formation of their individual lives, which is not balanced by specifically differentiated cultural models or institutional forms of life. These cultural models or institutional forms-as far as they are not yet destroyed completely by the monocultural tendencies of our time-exist only in a plurality of specific and differentiated communities. To save them from the complete victory of monoculturalism requires a multicultural effort. Where people have no access to such specific cultural identities, they cannot contribute to their gradual historical transformation. In such a situation, people tend to combine elements of different lifestyles and ethical orientations without worrying much about the consistency or even compatibility of their choices. Often, the only common point of reference of those choices can be found in a certain kind of utilitarian individualism." But those philosophers who criticize the postmodernist praise of multiplicity and emphasize that the project of modernity is not yet finished probably do not see this kind of utilitarian individualism as the fulfillment of the project of modernity. For them, the reconstruction of opportunities for shared responsibility becomes an imperative. In this respect, Robert Bellah and his colleagues have described a central tenet of an ethics of responsibility by emphasizing the need for institutions that can be experienced as learning communities, fostering a sense and praxis of responsibility. 12
II

This is my interpretation of the three main challenges for an ethics of responsibility today. What, then, are the basic characteristics of an ethical orientation that enables us to answer these challenges? I will approach the constructive task of a theory of responsibility in a twofold way: first I will analyze some central proposals in the modern history of the concept of responsibility; then, by means of a theological critique, I will transform those proposals into constructive elements of a theory of responsibility. I will do that under the four perspectives mentioned earlier: foundation in a relational anthropology, correspondence to reality, teleological character, and reflexive use of principles.'" Let me start with a quick overview of the material that informs my argument.
" See Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985). 12 Robert N. Bellah et al., The GoodSociety(New York: Knopf, 1991). 13In the following, I try to develop some ideas on responsibility that I presented in earlier contributions. See Wolfgang Huber, Konflikt und Konsens: Studien zur Ethik der Verantwortung (Munich: Kaiser, 1990), pp. 135-250; Wolfgang Huber and Hans-Richard Reuter, Friedensethik (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990), pp. 256-69; Wolfgang Huber, "Rights of Nature or Dignity of Nature?" Annual of the Societyof ChristianEthics (1991), pp. 43-60, "Selbst-

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Ethics of Responsibility As far as I know, Max Weber was the first author to formulate the ethical task posed by the problems of our technological era in terms of an ethics of responsibility.'4 His approach concentrated on an understanding of responsibility that emphasized the liability for future effects of present actions. It is the awareness of the growing range of those future effects that brought philosophers of the last decade to a renewal of Weber's effort. Jonas, Dieter Birnbacher, and others worked on the project of an ethics of responsibility understood as responsibility for the future.'15 It is evident that Karl-Otto Apel, as one of the outstanding representatives of an ethics of discourse, has made many efforts during the last ten years to develop the ethics of discourse toward an ethics of responsibility.'6 His basic analysis of the contemporary dangers that demand such an ethics of responsibility is to a large extent parallel to the analysis given by Jonas, but the philosophical means are different. For the project of a theological ethics of responsibility, it is in my view of special interest how Franklin Gamwell used and transformed Apel's philosophical approach.17 The most helpful philosophical reflections on the term of responsibility itself occur in some writings of the late German philosopher Georg Picht.'8 The theological debate was until now to a remarkable extent a reaction to Weber's initiative. Dietrich Bonhoeffer incorporated an important part on the structure of the responsible life into the fragments for his unfinished "Ethics." He referred explicitly to Weber, adding that theologically the term "responsibility" includes a fullness that is not present in its daily use-"even there where it is understood as a highly ethical entity as in Bismarck and Weber."19Likewise, this richer conception of responsibility is in mind when H. Richard Niebuhr speaks about the "great modern symbol" of responsibility.20 He does not quote Weber directly, but he relies broadly on the social theory of George Herbert Mead. Though he
begrenzung aus Freiheit: Ober das ethische Grundproblem des technischen Zeitalters," EvangelischeTheologie52 (1992): 128-46. 14 Max Weber, "Politik als Beruf," in Gesammelte politischeSchriften,ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 4th ed. J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1980), pp. 505-60, esp. pp. 548-60. see n. 10 above. Dieter Birnbacher, Verantwortungfiir '15On Jonas, (Ttubingen: zukiinftigeGenerationen (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1988). 16 Karl-Otto Das des Apel, Diskursund Verantwortung: Problem Ubergangszurpostkonventionellen Moral (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988). and the Necessityof God (San 17 Franklin I. Gamwell, The Divine Good:ModernMoral Theory Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990). 18 Georg Picht, "Der Begriff der Verantwortung," in his Wahrheit, Vernunft,Verantwortung: Studien (Stuttgart: Klett, 1969), Hier undJetzt: Philosophieren Philosophische nachAuschwitzund Hiroshima(Stuttgart: Klett, 1980), 1:318-42. 19 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethik, ed. Ilse T6dt et al., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, no. 6 (Munich: Kaiser, 1992), p. 254. H. Richard Niebuhr, TheResponsible 20 Self. An Essayin ChristianMoralPhilosophy(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 149. The role of Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr as the two theological classics for this topic is already acknowledged in the composition of On Being Respon-

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The Journal of Religion does not refer to Bonhoeffer, both of them share a common basis in their understanding of what responsibility means. It is interesting that the newest American effort to write an ethics of responsibility--"The Good Society" of Bellah and his colleagues-is purely Niebuhrian in its understanding of responsibility.21Indeed, Niebuhr can offer us a starting point for our constructive reflections here. This starting point is the relational structure of human existence. All theological ethics of responsibility, as far as I can see, rely on a relational rather than a substantialist anthropology. A substantialist anthropology has its exemplary formulation in the understanding of humans as rational beings; a relational anthropology has its exemplary formulation in the understanding of humans as responsive and therefore responsible beings. The difference runs through the traditions of Christian theology and is reflected in the way in which these traditions speak of the understanding of humans as created in the image of God. Whereas a substantialist anthropology claims that even after the fall a substantial aspect of the original created status is saved, namely, human rationality, a relational anthropology emphasizes that the relation of humans to God is completely distorted by human sinfulness and is renewed by divine love and grace alone. Faith is, then, the way in which humans respond to this newly opened relationship. The alternative is crisply formulated by Luther in his Disputatiode homine (1536) by opposing the classical philosophical definition-that humans are rational animals ("hominem esse animal rationale")--with his theological definition that humans are justified by faith ("hominem iustificari fide").22 Not a status but a relationship of trust defines what humans are about; not their substantial rationality or their rational substance but their relationship to God in faith constitutes their being. It is consistent with this starting point that Luther develops his theological anthropology in relational terms. Basically, he differentiates four relations in which human life takes place-in relation to God, to other persons, to the world, to oneself. I have reviewed this exemplary elaboration of a relational anthropology in Luther's theology because it incorporates an indispensable presupposition for a new formulation of an ethics of responsibility in modern Protestant theology. The two most prominent representatives of such an
sible: Issues in PersonalEthics, ed. James M. Gustafson and James T. Laney (London: SCM, 1969). 21 Bellah et al., The GoodSociety(n. 12 above), 283-86. 22 Martin Luther, "Disputatio de homine," in Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar: Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, 1926), 39, pt. 1:175-77.

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Ethics of Responsibility ethics of responsibility-Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr-have in common that they understand the human person as responder. To quote Bonhoeffer: "The notion of responsibility means the comprehensive unity of the response to the reality which is given to us in Jesus Christ in distinction to the partial responses that the human person could give for instance out of a calculation of utility or out of some specific principles. In view of the life which encounters us in Jesus Christ, those partial answers do not suffice, for what is at stake is the unique and comprehensive response of our life."23 Whereas Bonhoeffer founds his relational anthropology directly in christological assumptions, Niebuhr develops a parallel idea on the basis of the typological differentiation between three basic concepts of the human person: man-the-maker, man-the-citizen, and man-the-answerer. "What is implicit in the idea of responsibility is the image of man-theanswerer, man engaged in dialogue, man acting in response to action upon him." 24With the help of Mead's concept of the social, interactional constitution of the self and Martin Buber's concept of dialogue he develops the four elements of responsibility, concentrated in his summarizing definition of responsibility as "the idea of an agent's action as response to an action upon him in accordance with his interpretation of the latter action and with his expectation of response to his response; and all of this is in a continuing community of agents."'25 Even more important than the distinction between the four elements of responsibility brought together in this definition is the fact that Niebuhr-like Bonhoeffer and independently from him-acknowledges two different structures of relationship in responsibility. Already in 1946, long before the lectures incorporated in The Responsible Self, he distinguishes between responsibility to and responsibility for.26In this earlier article he holds that Jesus directs all Christians to the ideal of responsibility to God and responsibility for all that God has made. The same structural distinction occurs also in Bonhoeffer, but with the difference that he sees a responsibility to God and for God as well as to humans and for humans.27 This view appears as well in one of the most important contributions to
23 24 25 26

Bonhoeffer, p. 254 (my translation). Niebuhr, The Responsible Self p. 56.

H. Richard Niebuhr, "The Responsibility of the Church for Society," in The Gospel,the Churchand the World,ed. Kenneth Scott Latourette (New York: Harper & Bros., 1946), pp. 111-33, esp. pp. 114-17, 119. This article is quoted by Charles Scriven, The Transformation of Culture:ChristianSocial EthicsafterH. RichardNiebuhr(Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1988), p. 56.
27

Ibid., p. 65.

Bonhoeffer,p. 255.

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The Journal of Religion the understanding of responsibility as a term in recent German philosophy, namely, in the writings of Picht.28 Linking up with Picht as well as modifying him, we can try to clarify the two basic kinds of relationships in responsibility, (1) "responsibility to" and (2) "responsibility for." 1) We tend to interpret "responsibility for" simply as care, as caring for someone. Parents, teachers, and politicians-interestingly enough-are the central examples of responsibility in Bonhoeffer as well as in Jonas.29 Of course, "responsibility for" includes care, but it means more than that. It is not simply care (Fiirsorge),but prospective care (Vorsorge). Not the instinct of care, but the specifically human capacity to anticipate the future constitutes "responsibility for."That is characteristically so in the case of normal role responsibilities as well as in the case of exceptional, vicarious responsibilities in situations of emergency, civil disobedience, or resistance. Not only the care that is evoked in me by the presence of the other, but the prospective care for the future of a shared realm of living together defines responsibility. The capacity that distinguishes humans from nonhuman animals and that is basic for human responsibility is the capacity to anticipate real possibilities in the future and to make a choice among them. Thus, responsibility is not simply and not exclusively-as is the tendency in Bonhoeffers's description-an "existence for others," or proexistence.30 It is a prospective care for a natural, social, and cultural space to which the responsible person herself belongs. This space is shaped historically and changes its form gradually. Likewise, the subjects of responsibility change. Responsibility is not constituted by the autonomous will of an individual subject. Rather, the subjects of responsibility are constituted by the interplay between the specific realm of responsibility, the events possible in it, and the interpretation of the tasks emerging from it in a community of interpreters. This interplay takes on institutional forms. They are historically changeable crystallizations of the understanding of responsibilities in a community of interpreters and of the ways in which such responsibilities have to be fulfilled. Thus a central criterion for the shape of institutions is whether or not they structure realms of responsibility and enable persons to fulfill specific responsibilities.
28 See n. 19 above. The following critical argument is first developed by Hans-Richard Reuter in Huber and Reuter (n. 13 above), pp. 261-65. 29 This results in an unreciprocal and even "total" understanding of responsibility in Jonas, which I have criticized at various points; see, e.g., Huber, "Selbstbegrenzung aus Freiheit" (n. 13 above). 3o For the origins of this concept in Bonhoeffer, see now Joachim von Soosten, Die Sozialitat der Kirche(Munich: Kaiser, 1992).

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Ethics of Responsibility 2) The idea of responsibility has its original place in the sphere of law. "Responsibility to" originally means responsibility to a judge. The transfer of this idea from the sphere of law to the sphere of ethics was historically possible only under the influence of the Christian idea that all humans have to give a last account to a divine judge at the end of history, in the fullness of time. Universal history as such became the ultimate horizon of human responsibility. The Christian tradition links this universalization of responsibility back to the life of the individual. Here the parable of the last judgment (Matt. 25:31-46) has a fundamental as well as an exemplary function. On the one hand, this parable portrays a last judgment at the fulfillment of times, when the actions of all individuals can receive their definite meaning in light of the actions of all other individuals. On the other hand, it portrays a present situation on the basis of which one's actions are judgednamely, the needs of the weak and the oppressed, the fears and hopes of the last brothers and sisters, of those who are hungry and thirsty, who are aliens and fallen among robbers, as well as those who are ill or imprisoned. The legitimacy or illegitimacy of our actions is decided in our interactions with those who are weaker than we are. We can never definitely know whether our actions will receive such a justification, because we never know in a definite sense what we are doing. We only meet the divine judge in the encounter with those who are weaker than ourselves. But there is a criterion included in the notion of responsibility that is not merely formal but has a material character. The criterion says, your actions are justifiable as far as they are favorable for those who are weaker than you are. All applications of this criterion to given circumstances will be provisional and fallible because only at the end of history will the definite meaning of your action in relation to all other action be revealed. As provisional and fallible as these applications are, the criterion itself gives a clear indication where our responsibility is most seriously challenged. Such an ethics of responsibility is not restricted to the horizon of immediate interaction but extends as far as our involvement in social processes creates or sustains relationships of "stronger" and "weaker." That is the case, as we have seen, not only with those who share with us a common globe today but also with generations yet to come. Seen from such a perspective, the measure of a person's responsibility depends on the extent of her personal or structural power. Power is not only a means to realize one's responsibility, but likewise the use of power has to be subjected to the test of responsibility. And that means to test whether or not this use of power favors those who are weaker. Responsibility, it could be added, does not mean powerlessness but a reflexive use of power; it is the ability to gain power over one's power. It is not by accident that the question of responsibility arises as a central theme in 583

The Journal of Religion ethical discourse exactly at a time in which humans have achieved power over nearly everything except their own power.3' The reflexive use of power, which forms the center of the question of responsibility, is in itself a problem of power. If you understand by power the ability to shape and transform reality, you cannot develop any ethics of responsibility without the implication of a specific kind of realism. Indeed, all the theories of responsibility that form the background of this essay imply a certain kind of realism. This is true of Weber's basic distinction between an ethics of convictions-wrongly named an "ethics of ultimate ends"-in which someone follows his or her basic convictions irrespective of effects and results in the real world-and an ethics of responsibility, for which the results and the consequences of actions in the real world are decisive." Likewise, the Ethics of Bonhoeffer-as we can assume today, after the research that has been done for the new edition-started with his effort to give a theological definition of what reality means. The first chapter he wrote for his Ethics was probably the chapter on "Christ, Reality, and the Good." This chapter contains the hermeneutical key for his whole effort. He writes: "The reality of God discloses itself only by setting me entirely in the reality of the world, and when I encounter the reality of the world, it is always already sustained, accepted and reconciled in the reality of God. This is the inner meaning of the revelation of God in the human being Jesus Christ. Christian ethics enquires about the realization of this divine and worldly reality which is given in Christ, in our world." 33 A concept of realism is also found in Niebuhr. He does not ground his understanding of reality in christological reflection but rather in his concept of radical monotheism. He understands God as acting in all events of the external history around us. He not only omits but actually avoids explicitly christological reflection on this claim. But that means that he does not reflect explicitly on the criteria under which events of the external history could be judged with respect to the divine will or the divine telos of history. Niebuhr's radically monotheistic tenet that God is active in all events of the external history makes the relationship between God and history ultimately mysterious. Some critics have found a Kantian dualism working in Niebuhr's un-

31 Romano Guardini, quoted by Willem Visser't Hooft, A Responsible in University a Responsible Society(Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1971), p. 5. 32 See the translation in Max Weber, "Politics as Vocation," in FromMax Weber, ed. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 120-28. ss Bonhoeffer (n. 19 above), p. 40, as translated by Ilse Tbdt, in Clifford Green et al., "Textual Research for the New Edition," in Bonhoeffer's Ethics: Old Europeand New Frontiers, ed. Guy Carter et al. (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), pp. 30-38, quote on p. 36.

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derstanding of history.34While that could be debated in the case of Niebuhr, it is evident in the case of Apel, who endeavors to develop his discourse ethics as an ethics of responsibility. For that reason, he no longer finds it sufficient to reconstruct the foundation of discourse ethics in terms of a transcendental reflection on the a priori of a communication community. Rather he wants to see this a priori applied as a regulative idea to practical discourses in the real world. This leads to the distinction between part A and part B in his discourse ethics.35This distinction parallels the Kantian dualism between the noumenal and the phenomenal world. In an earlier debate with Apel I pointed out that his distinction between part A and part B of discourse ethics appears to be a secular version of the two-kingdoms doctrine that is well known in Christian theology, especially in the new-Protestant Lutheran tradition.36 If you do not want to follow such a Kantian and neo-Lutheran distinction between two spheres of reality, it is preferable to locate the conflict in reality itself. For that, an incarnational christology seems to offer helpful clarifications. To understand God as the one who entered worldly reality in faithfulness to the divine creation and for the sake of its fulfillment means to see the conflicts in reality-the conflicts between death and life, isolation and community, hatred and love, violence and peace, guilt and grace-from the perspective of the vivid and life-giving divine spirit whose presence in the world is symbolized by the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection of Christ. Human participation in the conflicts of reality is therefore oriented toward enacting parables of life and community, of love and peace, and, so, parables of grace in a reality still overshadowed by death and isolation, by hatred and violence, and so by guilt. Correspondence to reality as a central tenet of an ethics of responsibility means this kind of participation in reality. It does not mean the conformity to an obligatory normative force flowing from the functional It imperatives of the partial systems of society (Eigengesetzlichkeit). means participation in the ongoing struggle to bring the criteria of humanity to bear under the given and ambiguous conditions of action emerging in the historical character of society. It is not adaptation to reality but critical distance from it, which alone enables us to assess properly those conditions of action. This is the necessary precondition of responsible action.
a 34 See Robert Dean Benne, Toward Theoryof Responsibility: A Critiqueof Four Proposals (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, Divinity School, 1970), p. 237. On Niebuhr, see also Albert R. Jonsen, Responsibility ModernReligiousEthics (Washington, D.C.: in Corpus Books, 1968). He has developed this proposal on several occasions, as in his 35 paper for the Chicago conference on "Realism and Responsibility in Contemporary Ethics" in this issue, pp. 496-513. 36 See Ethikund Politik heute, ed. Bj6rn Engholm and Wilfried R6hrich (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1990), pp. 81-82.

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The Journal of Religion This kind of critical realism also informs the way in which an ethics of responsibility makes use of the information it gets from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. It follows a "hermeneutics of suspicion" toward all claims of autonomy for partial systems; it takes a great interest in the building up of counterexpertise wherever there are monopolies of knowledge and expertise dependent on the power centers of society. Moreover, it develops a critical awareness of the ethical assumptions implicit in the methods of scientific research and contributes to their explicit critique and transformation. It seems to me that Apel's discourse ethics is basically not teleological but deontological. The ideal communication community is understood not as the telos but as the regulative idea under which the real communication community has to be seen. He describes his categorical imperative at a certain point as "that of realizing in the long run the ideal communication-community within the real communication-community."37 But it would be more precise to read his categorical imperative as follows: "So act as if the real communication-community becomes the place of realizing the ideal communication-community." The consequence of this deontological approach is a dualism in the understanding of reality. If you want to overcome this dualism, you need a teleological concept of human action. An ethics of responsibility has to be understood basically as a teleological ethics. This includes, of course, deontological elements. It is, in my view, one of the important contributions of Gamwell in his book The Divine Goodthat he clarifies this teleological character of ethics in dialogue with Apel. For that purpose, he defines a telosas "a possible or future state of affairs or characteristic of existence to which an agent has a positive relation."38 And he understands as teleological all those kinds of ethical reflection in which "moral, in distinction from immoral, action is identified by the intent to realize or maximize some characteristic of existence."39 I share this shift to teleology as well as the proposed definition and want to introduce an additional distinction. What I want to introduce is the distinction between eschatology and teleology. I call eschatological the perspective on the end of history and the fullness of time in which every single event (and so every human action) receives its definite meaning in the light of all other single events. The realization of this end of history, in which every single human action receives its definite meaning in the light of all other single events, cannot itself be the telos of human actions themselves. It is solely the result of the
37 Karl-Otto Apel, "Types of Rationality Today," in RationalityToday, ed. Theodore Gereats (Ottawa: Universite d'Ottawa Press, 1979), pp. 307-40, quote on p. 338. 38 Gamwell (n. 17 above), p. 38. 39 Ibid., p. 62.

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divine activity. That is why this eschatological telos is called divine. In distinction to the eschaton,all tele to which human agents can have a positive relation are marked by a relative and finite character. All human knowledge about those tele is provisional and fallible. That is reflected in the recognition that we encounter the teleological structure of ethics in the form of a competing plurality of tele. There is not only a competition between different persons or communities of interpretation representing different tele, but there is at the same time quite often a competition between different tele within the individual human agent. What is then the criterion for human orientation in the midst of a plurality of tele? It can be found in the correspondence between the eschatonand those tele, in the correspondence between the divine promise for nature and history and the relative and provisional "parables" of this promise, which humans create in their historical activity. This parabolic correspondence between our actions and our ultimate end recalls the parable of the last judgment, discussed earlier. In this respect a theological ethics of responsibility can likewise be named an ethics of correspondence. An ethics of responsibility sees those states of affairs that have to be avoided more definitely than those that have to be realized. It is therefore also teleological with respect to possible states of affairs or characteristics of existence to which an agent has a negative relation. It follows a "heuristics of fear," as Jonas called it, and tries in such a way to hold history open for a variety of human hopes. Its imperative might be formulated as follows: so act that the consequences of your actions remain compatible with the future existence and dignity of human as well as nonhuman life in the biosphere. Or negatively: avoid actions that are incompatible with the future existence and the dignity of human as well as nonhuman life in the biosphere. The modest variant of this negative imperative then reads: Diminish those actions by which you use your freedom at the expense of the same freedom of future generations and minimize all actions of violence against nonhuman nature. This most modest formulation of the imperative implies a far-reaching consequence for our understanding of human freedom. Insofar as we do not understand human freedom as implying the right of every generation to decide to be the last human generation and therefore to put an end to human life in a kind of collective suicide, our freedom necessarily implies the duty of self-limitation with respect to the life conditions and the freedom of future generations."4 If we understand that human freedom does not imply the right of every generation to exhaust or destroy
4 This is the position of Bruce Ackerman, SocialJustice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), which I have discussed at length in my "Selbstbegrenzung aus Freiheit" (n. 13 above).

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The Journal of Religion the natural resources of the biosphere, then our freedom entails necessarily the duty of self-limitation with respect to the dignity of nonhuman nature. Under such a perspective, an ethics of responsibility emphasizes self-limitation out of freedom as one of the first virtues of responsible life. That said, I want to return to Weber for a moment in order to specify the place of an ethics of responsibility in the evolution of ethical worldviews. Weber's proposal can be properly understood only when we relate it to his sociology of religion and when we reinterpret it more systematically than he did. The decisive proposals for such a systematic reading of Weber have come from Wolfgang Schluchter.41 For Weber, the transition from the Catholicism of the Middle Ages to modern Protestantism included the step from an ethics of norms to an ethics of convictions. An ethics of norms formulates imperatives for actions that have to be followed in each and every case. An ethics of convictions is restricted to general principles that orient the conduct of life as a whole but do not necessarily imply direct guidance for action in specific cases. Thus the normative traditions of Christian ethics were transformed by ascetic Protestantism into the principles of an inner-worldly unselfishness, which were not directly applicable to every single case. On the contrary, this ethos turned out to be congenial to a capitalistic mode of economic organization, which indeed made calculated selfishness one of its decisive ethical features. In the evolution of ethical worldviews, the step from an ethics of norms to an ethics of convictions was followed by another step. That was the step from an ethics of convictions to an ethics of responsibility, or-to put it another way-the step from a simple use of principles to a reflexive use of principles. In an ongoing process, culminating in the Enlightenment period, people find themselves in a social world characterized by a plurality of religious and ethical orientations. Whoever wants to respond to such a situation in an appropriate way has to relate his or her principles in a reflexive manner to the principles of others. He or she has to take the freedom of conscience of others as seriously as his or her own. Included in such a deliberation is the question of what kind of results would follow if one or the other principle became effective in the shaping of reality. The comparison of principles and the assessment of consequences therefore become central elements to every ethical orientation. That is how the transition from an ethics of convictions to an ethics of responsibility functions. The respect for the others' freedom of conscience is at the center of this process.
Die Entwicklungdes okzidentalen Rationalismus: Eine Analysevon Max 41 Wolfgang Schluchter, Webers Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1979), Religionund Lebensfiihrung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988).

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Ethics of Responsibility Seen from such a perspective, we can finally interpret the ethics of responsibility as the application of the Golden Rule on the level of principles: respect the principles of others as much as you want others to respect your own. It is evident that this version of the Golden Rule has two very important implications. The one says, respect other people in their dignity, independent of your judgment about their principles. The other says, exclude all kinds of violence from the controversies about principles or truth questions. Under the conditions of a pluralistic society, this version of the Golden Rule reflects a kind of moral enquiry that is not discussed in Alasdair MacIntyre's "three rival versions of moral enquiry."42This way of moral enquiry was opened up by those Reformation as well as Enlightenment traditions that were based on the mutual recognition of the freedom of conscience and the separation of religion from the state. The first of my two proposed implications is prefigured by the distinction between people and their deeds in the doctrine of justification. The dignity of persons is not constituted by their deeds and is not offset by their misdeeds. This distinction between persons and their deeds applies in a parallel way to persons and their principles. The second implication of the Golden Rule is anticipated in the tenet that faith-that means conviction in truth questions-can be fostered only by communication, not by coercion, and only by the word, not by violence (sinevi, sed verbo).4 The idea of a reflexive use of principles is not strange to theological ethics; it is deeply embedded in its theological structure itself.
III

Looking back on the four dimensions of a theological theory of responsibility, which I have tried to develop here, we can find a series of substantial criteria for responsible action. I summarize them as follows: prospective care for a shared natural, social, and cultural space of living together; fairness toward the weaker as the test for the legitimacy of actions; critical evaluation of the contextual conditions of action; self-limitation with respect to the rights of future generations and to the dignity of nature; respect for the freedom of conscience for others as for oneself. Such criteria do not imply easy solutions for the main ethical challenges of today. Those challenges are rooted in power structures and interests. The task to gain power over human power itself needs political efforts of unprecedented dimensions. The crucial questions are how to achieve
42 Alasdair MacIntyre, ThreeRival Versions Moral Enquiry:Encyclopedia, and Traof Genealogy, dition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). 43 See the "Confessio Augustana" of 1530, article 28, in Die der Bekenntnisschriften Kirche(G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959), p. 124. Evangelisch-Lutherischen

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The Journal of Religion political control over an internationalized economy and how to make the dynamics of market economies compatible with the demands of ecological sustainability, social justice, and democratic participation. We cannot here enter a debate over how to organize and to institutionalize the kind of political processes needed for these tasks, but it is useful to underline how the criteria of an ethics of responsibility elaborated in this essay may function as regulative principles for the examination of concrete options in the main fields of contemporary ethics. In order to illustrate this, I turn once again to the three main challenges for an ethics of responsibility. The crimes of obedience committed during the twentieth century oblige to anamnetic solidarity. This solidarity has to be oriented toward the destiny of the weaker, to the suffering of the victims. A preferential option for the victims instead of for the heros is the appropriate way to deal with history. Humankind needs memorials like the Hiroshima Peace Park or Yad Vashem in Jerusalem more urgently than it needs columns of victory. It is cause for shame that Germany until today has not built an appropriate monument in memory of the millions of victims of German genocide during the Nazi period. The preferential option for the victims is not only a posture with regard to the past. It has necessary consequences for the future. Solidarity by remembering is the beginning of efforts to avoid the repetition of comparable victimizations. It is the starting point for a democratization of the political conscience in order to build critical minority groups with enough public resonance to oppose possible tendencies toward crimes of obedience. The critical evaluation of the contextual conditions of action has as one of its implications an understanding of reality that is not restricted to particular interests on a short-term basis but takes into account the lasting effects of individual and collective actions. With regard to the conflict between the interest in maximization of economic profit and the interest in optimization of ecological sustainability, an ethics of responsibility opts for the latter. Under the conditions of a globalized technology this conflict has decisive implications for the future of humankind and the biosphere. The preferential option for the preservation of nature needs to be transformed into political and social processes, which lead to an effective limitation on the use of economic power under the auspices of its compatibility with the rights of future generations and the dignity of nature. The crisis of modernity needs an answer. This answer implies a new awareness of the cultural roots of personal identity, of the religious forms in which humans reflect the relatedness of their lives, and of the institutional forms that are necessary conditions for a "good life." But these perspectives emphasized in our days by many communitarian philoso590

Ethics of Responsibility phers and theologians have to be related in a constructive way to the liberal heritage of the Enlightenment, namely, the respect for the freedom of conscience, for others as for oneself. To acknowledge that we coexist within the same society with individuals and groups who form their personal and collective identities with the help of different cultural and religious sources than we do, means at the same time to accept and to shape actively the multicultural and multireligious reality of the technologically advanced societies. The crimes of obedience, the globalization of technology, and the crisis of modernity are the three main challenges for contemporary ethics. Ethical reflection is only one element in the effort to meet these challenges. Even if we utilize the best parts of the traditions of ethical reflection and moral orientation and try to transform them, there is no guarantee that we can meet the tasks before us. But it is evident enough that ethical reflection today is much more than a merely intellectual enterprise; it entails deep involvement in the struggle for the future of life in the biosphere.

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