Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen University of Southern Denmark

Transcription

1 Relational Views of Ethical Obligation in Wittgenstein, Lévinas and Løgstrup Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen University of Southern Denmark ABSTRACT. The aim of the present article is to explore relational views of the source of ethical obligation, that is, views according to which the source and binding character of ethical obligation lies in our relation to something else, that being the world or the other person. Relational views are represented here by the views of ethics found in the ethical thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Emmanuel Lévinas and the Danish philosopher K.E. Løgstrup. In the philosophy of Wittgenstein, we find a description of two challenges that face relational approaches to ethical obligation, challenges that we here label the make-it-personal challenge and the content challenge, which are used in the article to spell out the nature and commitments of relational views. The resources to overcome the first challenge are found in Lévinas idea that the I is individuated and becomes a subject through responsibility for the other. However, Lévinas cannot provide us with an answer to the second challenge, and we turn therefore to Løgstrup s development of a notion of the content of ethical obligation as arising from the interplay between the responsiveness to a radical and silent demand to take care of the other and my personal view on and understanding of life. Løgstrup thus presents us with the most promising form of relational view of ethical obligation, a view that also brings into focus the potential of Wittgenstein s philosophy for understanding ethical obligation. KEYWORDS. Ethics, ethical obligation, relational, Wittgenstein, Lévinas, Løgstrup I. INDIVIDUAL AND RELATIONAL SOURCES OF ETHICAL NORMATIVITY This is an article about relational approaches to an understanding of the source or sources of ethical obligation. 1 In order to make sense of this notion of relational approaches, we can start by distinguishing between two different views of ethical obligation, that is, between views according to which the source of ethical obligation is placed in the ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 22, no. 1(2015): by Centre for Ethics, KU Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: /EP

2 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 individual and views according to which it is placed in the individual s relationship to something else such as the world or another person. We can call these two groups of views individualistic and relational views of ethical obligation, respectively. The first view we find exemplified in Hume s idea that we come to feel obliged by the possible utility of others out of a feeling of universal sympathy ( , 1777), in Kant s idea of practical reason as setting a law for the acting person (1785), and in the contractualist view of ethical obligation as founded in the voluntary consent of individuals (Rawls 1971; Scanlon 1998). Historically, individualistic views of ethical obligation have been the most influential, but the relational view of ethical obligation does seem to be prominent in ethical theories inspired by phenomenology. We find such relational views exemplified in Lévinas idea of ethical responsibility as arising from our meeting with the otherness, the alterity of the other, Sartre s idea of the fundamental role of the ethical appeal (1992), and Simon Critchley s idea of ethical experience (2007). Before we proceed, we need to make a number of provisos. First, the distinction between individualistic and relational views concerns the source of ethical obligation, and it comes into focus at a very general level of description in this way the distinction naturally disregards a number of important differences between positions grouped together within one of its two categories. Second, the distinction is not meant to be exhaustive; there may be views that do not fall neatly into either group. 2 Finally, the claim presented here is not that this is the only or the best way of distinguishing between views of ethical obligation. Instead, the distinction is introduced in order to achieve three aims the aims of this article, as it so happens first, to identify two challenges facing relational views of ethical obligation; second, to use these challenges to spell out the nature and commitments of relational views; and finally, to distinguish between two fundamentally different forms of such views. The main aim of this article is to understand relational approaches to ethical obligation and its main protagonists are two representatives of a 16

3 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION relational understanding of ethical obligation, namely Ludwig Wittgenstein and K.E. Løgstrup. Wittgenstein will help us develop two challenges that face relational approaches to ethical obligation. Løgstrup will help us to overcome them and in doing so, he will show us what is the most promising form of relational view of ethical obligation, one that will also bring into focus the potential of Wittgenstein s philosophy for descriptions of ethical obligation. Løgstrup s fundamental notion of the ethical demand thus provides us with a framework in which we can understand ethical obligation and Wittgenstein s philosophy proves to be a resource when trying to realise such a framework. In between the engagement with our two protagonists, we will also review the potential in the relational view of Emmanuel Lévinas. II. WITTGENSTEIN S TWO CHALLENGES TO RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION In order to understand the challenges facing relational views, it may be illuminating to compare the strengths and weaknesses of individualistic and relational views of ethical obligation while noting, of course, that ethical obligation is here understood in a rather minimal sense. Ethical obligation is something that (i) ought to oblige the subject, i.e. has a claim to be binding (which is what being ethical means), and (ii) actually can do so (because if it cannot oblige the subject, the subject cannot be blamed for neglecting it). 3 If we first turn our attention toward individualistic views of ethical obligation, we can note that they often run into problems when trying to account for the objectivity of ethical obligation. Hume s reference to the empirical fact that humans are alike in having a universal feeling of sympathy is here paradigmatically problematic (see, for example, Hume 1777, sect. I). It is one thing to make a case for the claim that I can feel sympathy towards others, but it is rather more difficult to make a case for the claim that I ought to feel in this way. Traditionally, contractualists have 17

4 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 faced the problem of how to substantiate the idea of the obliging character of a contract not actually signed. This led to the development of theories of hypothetical consent as in the work of John Rawls (1971) which has left modern contractualism facing the challenge of how the product of such hypothetical actions can be said to express objective obligations. 4 We should also note, however, that individually based views seem to encounter fewer problems when trying to account for how ethical obligation can come to oblige the individual; after all, the obligation has its source in the individual and, in this sense, it is already his or hers. For relational views, these two problems are reversed. Here, it is relatively trouble-free to account for the objective source of ethical obligation, as such obligation springs from outside the individual, from his or her relations themselves or from that to which he or she is related. The challenge is instead to show how the individual comes to take this obligation to be his or her own, how he or she can come to see it as obliging, and relatedly, how he or she can come to know what it is that he or she is obliged to do. We will now turn to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in order better to understand the nature of these two challenges. Throughout his thinking on ethics, Wittgenstein himself held a relational view of ethical obligation albeit in different versions. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), Wittgenstein portrays ethics as arising from our relationship with, or rather, our attitude towards the world. Ethics is a condition of the sense of the world (TLP 6.41), as he writes, and it raises an obligation for us to relate to the world in the best way and thus to alter its limits (TLP 6.43). In later reflections, Wittgenstein presents the view that ethical obligation arises from our living in a fundamental relation to the other that obliges us to understand both the other s potential need for help, the possible infinite distress (Culture and Value [CV], 52) of the other, and the other s potential as moral ideal. 5 In other words, even if Wittgenstein s view changes as he moves from finding the source of ethical obligation in the subject s relationship to the world to finding it in his or her 18

5 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION relationship to other human beings, he continuously describes ethical obligation as relational. Wittgenstein ties this relational view of ethics together with two points that may appear quite controversial. The first is that as ethical obligation arises from our relation to something else, the content of the obligation is specific to the particular relation and the context in which it arises. This means that we cannot provide a general or theoretical account of the content of ethical obligation or a general test for such content. We find Wittgenstein s rejection of action-guiding ethical theory emphatically expressed in a conversation with the Vienna Circle, recorded by Friedrich Waismann. If I were told anything that was a theory, I would say, No, no! That does not interest me. Even if this theory were true, it would not interest me it would not be the exact thing I was looking for. What is ethical cannot be taught (Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle [WVC], ). Wittgenstein thus rejects the idea of an action-guiding moral theory; in short, he rejects the idea that we can turn to philosophy in order to learn what we ought to do. 6 However, if ethics is not something to be settled in general, and if theory cannot determine the content of ethical responsibility or obligation, the content is rather settled in and by particular situations. With regard to relational views of ethical obligation, this means that the content of an ethical obligation must instead be settled by features of either the concrete relation in which we find ourselves or by that to which we are relating (we will return to this distinction at the end of the article). Here we observe the first of Wittgenstein s challenges. As those who hold relational views of ethical obligation cannot give a general or theoretical characterisation or test of the content of ethical obligation of what is demanded of us they will instead have to provide an account of how we can establish the content of the ethical obligation that we face in concrete cases. Let us call this the Content Challenge. In Wittgenstein s writing on ethics, this challenge is tied to another difficulty facing relational views. According to such views, ethical obligation arises from the outside, and this means that it also presents itself as 19

6 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 something against which the subject may in fact rebel. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein presents the problem in this way: When an ethical law of the form, Thou shalt is laid down, one s first thought is, And what if I do not do it?. Wittgenstein is here pointing to the fact that, for moral action to be possible, the subject has to have some form of interest in the ethical demand, that is, he or she must be able to see this demand as possibly relevant and motivating. Wittgenstein therefore continues: There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself (TLP 6.422). In order for us to be able to act from an understanding of our ethical obligation, it does not suffice that this obligation presents itself as a demand; there must also be a way in which we can come to see it as something that concerns us, that we can come to make our own. Wittgenstein offers a striking description of how an ethical demand is characterised precisely by being a demand that always concerns me in A Lecture on Ethics (LE): Supposing that I could play tennis and one of you saw me playing and said Well, you play pretty badly and suppose I answered I know, I m playing badly but I don t want to play any better, all the other man could say would be Ah then that s all right. But suppose I had told one of you a preposterous lie and he came up to me and said You re behaving like a beast and then I were to say I know I behave badly, but then I don t want to behave any better, could he then say Ah then that s all right? Certainly not; he would say Well, you ought to want to behave better (LE 5). With a controversial use of words, Wittgenstein insists that for an ethical demand to become an ethical obligation, the demand has to be something that I can make personal. In an entry from 1931, he writes: An ethical proposition states You shall do this! or That is good! but not These people say that this is good. But an ethical proposition is a personal act. Not a statement of fact. Like an exclamation of admiration (Private and 20

7 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION Public Occasions [PPO], 85). This point is especially pressing for proponents of relational views of ethical obligation. As they hold that ethical obligation arises from the outside of the subject, they will all in one way or the other have to account for how such an obligation can become relevant for us, can become personal. This is not just a question of being motivated, but also a more fundamental question of describing how moral obligations and considerations can become something that genuinely concern the individual. Let us call this the Make it Personal Challenge and let it conclude our short review of Wittgenstein s two challenges. III. LÉVINAS GUIDED BY OTHERNESS? The question to which we now turn is how relational views of ethical obligation can provide an answer to, and reconcile, Wittgenstein s two challenges. In order to get us thinking us about this, we could turn to what seems to be the relational view par excellence, the view of ethical responsibility found in the thinking of Emmanuel Lévinas. As already mentioned, the central element in Lévinas understanding of ethics is the subject s relation to the other. In order to understand this relationship, we can begin from Lévinas analysis of intentional consciousness, as developed in the phenomenological tradition. Here the subject enjoys a cognitive and practical relationship to the world, ordering the unknown by the use of concepts and thus objectifying the world. In this way, the subject establishes an environment in which he or she can exercise both his or her rationality and his or her will and freedom. Non-controversially, Lévinas thus sees consciousness as the source of both our epistemological and practical grasp of the world (1994). More controversially, Lévinas sees this form of thinking as in a sense a form of totalitarianism, because what is originally different from the subject is made to surrender to his or her categories and interests. The relation to the other is here [...] only accomplished through a third term which I find in myself (1969, 44). Moreover, Lévinas view comes into character when he points to the 21

8 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 absolute limit of this, the subject s activity of understanding and mastering the world, namely the fact of the other person. The other is what resists the concepts and categories of the subject, and what does not bend to his or her will. Lévinas illuminates the physiognomy of this relationship to the other in two different ways. One is his famous phenomenological analysis of the face as the expression of sheer alterity, the otherness of the other. The face is a phenomenon that points beyond what we know, because it is more than a mere assemblage of features a nose, a mouth, a forehead and more than its particular expression it s being happy, sad, angry. The face is a phenomena that [...] expresses, not a representation of something, but itself (1969, 200). It thus has an expression of its own that points beyond my cognitive and practical grasp of it. Lévinas describes it thus: Prior to any particular expression and beneath all particular expressions, which cover over and protect with an immediately adopted face or countenance, there is the nakedness and destitution of the expression as such, that is to say extreme exposure, defencelessness, vulnerability itself (1994, 83). Why is the face defenceless like this? Because by expressing and meaning just what it is, the other, that is, by being just itself and not anything else, for the face to present itself is at the same time to risk its own annihilation. The face expresses this exposure and in doing so, it raises the demand You shall not kill. Therefore, Lévinas insists, [...] access to the face is straightaway ethical (1992, 85). According to him, the other is absolutely other to the extent that the other and I cannot even share a number (1969, 39), let alone a quality (1969, 194). This otherness is the source of the other s resistance to any non-ethical categories. The infinite paralyses power by its infinite resistance to murder, which [...] gleams in the face of the other, Lévinas observes and elaborates: There is here a relation not with a very great resistance, but with something absolutely 22

9 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION other (1969, 199). 7 In this way, otherness or alterity is the central source of ethical obligation and marks the limit between an ethical relation and all other relations. To show why Lévinas also takes this relationship to be vital for the subject, we turn to his second way of illuminating it. Lévinas points out that the relation to the other marks the limit of the subject s dominance over the world. Confronted with the other, the question of the subject s right to be is opened and the subject is forced to account for him or herself. To speak, however, one has to become someone in particular, and the subject suddenly encounters a need to justify his or her being. One has to speak, to say I, to be in the first person, precisely to be me. But, from that point, in affirming this me being, one has to respond to one s right to be (1994, 82). In this way, the subject comes, as Lévinas writes, [...] not into the world but into question (1994, 81). This need to justify oneself does, however, arise prior to the order established in intentional consciousness, and it cannot therefore refer to this order. This means that with regard to justification, the subject is left passively standing before the other, without qualities or goals. 8 The only way that the subject can justify him or herself is thus by taking on the responsibility for the other, or more precisely, for the otherness of the other. The face in which the other the absolutely other presents himself does not negate the same, does not do violence to it [...], for instead of offending my freedom it calls it to responsibility and founds it (1969, 203). Thus by taking on my responsibility, I both establish and justify my unique existence. Here we find Lévinas answer to Wittgenstein s Make it Personal Challenge. In Lévinas thinking, taking on my moral responsibility and obligation is actually the way I come to be a subject in the first place. The ethical obligation is therefore always personal in the relevant sense. This leads us to Wittgenstein s second challenge of how to establish the content of my ethical responsibility and obligation. In relation to this, we should of course note a couple of points. First, that Lévinas emphasises how practical living is haunted by a sense of uncertainty and crises 23

10 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 arising from its condition, the primary sociality (1969, 304), the relation to the other. Second, that Lévinas insists that there is indeed no fixed limit to my ethical responsibility. Ethical responsibility characterised by infinity that, as he puts it, [...] denotes not its actual immensity, but a responsibility increasing in the measure that it is assumed adding [...] justice summons me to go beyond the straight line of justice, and henceforth nothing can mark the end of this march (1969, 244 and 245, respectively; italics mine). There will always be more that I could do, ethically, and thus if my possibilities of doing something more for the other increase, so does my responsibility. In this very particular sense, of being principally unbounded, responsibility and obligation are infinite. Some would see this as an objection to Lévinas theory, but we could, I think, also see this as statement of the phenomenology of responsibility: as we take on more responsibility, and as our powers to meet such responsibility increase, we see that there is even more to which we ought to respond. This does not mean that Lévinas accepts the existence of a moral gap; he does not think that my ethical obligation exceeds what I can actually do. 9 Instead, he insists that there is no predetermined end to my moral responsibility; as far as I live up to some ethical obligation, I come to see that there is indeed more I could do. We might suspect that this feature necessarily connects to the structure of relational theories, because ethical obligation here arises not from what I can do, but from the call of the other. A proponent of relational views could add that this is in fact what we have to come to be able to handle as we attempt to grow into ethical maturity. Moreover, we here find a similarity between the view of Lévinas and that of Løgstrup. Løgstrup insists that the ethical demand is radical, because what is demanded, ethically, is that one acts completely unselfishly, only with regard for needs of the other. However, what we need to do in order to act in this way is not something we can determined in advance or can achieve by carrying out a predetermined set of actions (see below and Løgstrup 1997, 44-46; Fink 2007, 17-18). 10 At the same time, Løgstrup persistently insists that even if the ethical is unbounded, it is never limitless. 24

11 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION The radical character of the demand never implies that one should assume [...] a responsibility that goes beyond the bounds of one s own human limits, because in this case then [...] one inevitably violates those for whom one has assumed responsibility (1997, 47). This, however, seems to be the same point that Lévinas presents when he insists that the infinity of the demand does not denote its actual immensity. 11 To sum up, Lévinas insists that the content of our ethical obligation cannot be predetermined and that it cannot be given a final limit. What we find is thus that Lévinas does not present a theory about the content of ethical obligation; here he is in line with Wittgenstein in thinking that moral philosophy cannot tell us what to do. 12 Instead, Lévinas insists that the question of how to actualise our ethical relationship to the other is a question we should address not in philosophy, but in practical living. This, however, is precisely the point that lies at the heart of Wittgenstein s second challenge. What resources do we have, when we in practical living are trying to give content to our ethical obligation? According to Lévinas view, ethical responsibility arises, as we saw above, not from my relationship with the other, but from my relationship with alterity, the otherness of the other. However, the difference between this, the constitutive moment of my subjectivity and responsibility, and any actual attempt to live up to my ethical obligation seems unbridgeable. The question is this: how am I to give any content to my relation to the other, when this is a relation precisely to what I cannot know? 13 And if I try to get out of these difficulties by substantiating my ethical obligation with a particular content and responding to it in a certain way, I then seem to be in even greater trouble, because then I am responding to the other as something in particular and not as other that is, I am not responding to the other. I seem to be caught in a dilemma: either I fail to give content to my responsibility and thus fail my responsibility in an attempt to keep my relation to the other as absolute other, or I try to live up to my responsibility by providing it with content, and then fail in my relation to the absolute other by exchanging it for a relationship to an other that I can 25

12 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 understand. Caught in this dilemma, I stand paralysed before the other. I do not know how to give my ethical obligation any content, and I cannot act. IV. LØGSTRUP ON TRUST, SELFLESSNESS AND UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE To find a way out of this dilemma, we turn to another example of a relational view of ethical obligation, the phenomenologically grounded view found in the Danish philosopher and theologian K.E. Løgstrup s The Ethical Demand dating from In addition to helping us out of our Lévinasian catch-22 and finding a viable, relational view, Løgstrup will also help us see a fundamental difference between two forms of relational views of ethical obligation and bring us back to the potential of Wittgenstein s philosophy for an understanding of relational views. According to Løgstrup, ethics has its source in the fact that we find ourselves already placed in trusting relationships to each other. He points to the fact we cannot not take the train, ask for directions or engage in conversation without exposing ourselves, laying ourselves open, to the power of others, at least minimally. According to Løgstrup, this shows that behind our normally cautious and guarded relationships to one another we find a more fundamental and natural form of trust that is indeed a condition of our very lives. As Løgstrup notes: This may indeed seem strange, but it is part of what it means to be human. We would not be able to live; our life would be impaired and wither away if we were in advance to distrust one another, if we were to suspect the other of thievery and falsehood from the very outset (1997, 8-9). The existence of trust between humans is for Løgstrup not a theoretical conclusion, but rather a phenomenological fact, even if this fact is indeed often hidden from our view, both because of its familiarity and because it is, as Løgstrup puts it, a most disquieting fact, as it is the fact that our lives are always entangled with the lives of others (1997, 16; Fink 2007, 12-15). Moreover, the fact of the existence of trust is a fundamental fact; trust comes first, 26

13 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION mistrust is always secondary. Initially we believe one another s word, initially we trust one another (1997, 8). As we venture into life, we do so in trust of other people. It is only when we have reason to do so (as we, of course, so often have) that we come to develop ways to restrict our trust in others. Løgstrup insists, however, that the fact of fundamental trust is not an innocent fact. What this fact entails, is that [...] it is not within our power to determine whether we wish to live in relationships or not; we find ourselves in them simply because we exist (1997, 107). Given that our lives are intertwined, and given that we all have to act in trust of others, the fact of fundamental trust is inextricably linked to a demand. In the previous quotation, Løgstrup continues, We are already responsible, always, whether or not we want to be, because we have not ourselves ordered our lives (1997, 107). We are not masters of our own existence, but find ourselves in lives that are already given and in which we already stand in a number of particular relationships with other human beings. That is, we find ourselves already exposed to one another and our lives already interdependent and intertwined. 14 Fink and MacIntyre describe Løgstrup s view in this way: Life, thus, is necessarily interpersonal and involves that basic trust which informs all communication (1997, xxi). The fundamental character of the fact of trust thus arises from the equally fundamental fact that we come into being as already dependent upon one another; we need to trust one another, because we are equally dependent on the order of the lives in which we find ourselves. In a crucial footnote, Løgstrup explains the necessary connection between the fact of fundamental trust, of the order of our lives, and the ethical demand that arises therefrom. Løgstrup here identifies it as his concern to point out the intimate connection between the fact and the demand, to point out that to a great extent the demand grows out of the fact. In other words, the fact forces upon us the alternative: either we take care of the other person s life or we ruin it (1997, 18). The fact of our mutual dependence on fundamental trust and the intertwined and 27

14 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 exposed character of our lives already implies the ethical demand: to act with the life of the other in mind. It may sound like something of an overstatement when Løgstrup says that we are faced with a choice of either taking care of the life of the other or ruining it. However, if we spell out this claim, we here find two important points in Løgstrup s conception of ethics. The first is that the ethical demand reveals how we always have only two available choices: either we act with the life of the other in mind or we act from our own self-interested concerns. There is, ethically speaking, no third option. Whatever reason we may have for not taking care of the other, a failure to do so is always an ethical failure. As Fink notes, if you failed someone, you failed them, and thereby failed something important in yourself. This is the basic distinction between good and evil; this is the ethical up and down as it were, of human life (2007, 18). The second point is that as the ethical demand springs from the fact that human life is dependent on our taking care of each other, ethical failure is always acting against life as such. In acting against the ethical demand, we are never promoting, but always destroying, that is, contributing to the ruin of the life of the other even if we (in most cases, of course) will not ruin that life completely. 15 We should note here an important point of agreement between Løgstrup and Lévinas. Like Lévinas, Løgstrup rejects the idea that the ethical demand arises as something external to the individual, and he insists instead that we do in fact come to be subjects through the demand. The ethical demand is individuating, because it addresses me, in this relation only I can take care of the other. Of course, I may revolt against the demand, and, according to Løgstrup, I often will. 16 Importantly, however, these reactions are, as Løgstrup tells us, secondary; they arise because I am frightfully aware of my ethical responsibility. That is, by stressing the individuating character of the demand, Løgstrup answers Wittgenstein s challenges of how ethical responsibility becomes mine, becomes personal, in a manner quite similar to that of Lévinas. 28

15 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION Here, the two philosophers part company, however. In contrast to the view of Lévinas, Løgstrup does not think the individuation of the subject arises from a particular feature of the other such as his or her otherness. Instead, he insists that it arises from the trusting relationship between the two. I become a subject because of the plain and actual fact that it is I and not anyone else who stand in a relationship to you, and thus that it is I and not anyone else who will have to decide what is best for you. Only I can be the judge of that I cannot, for example, rely on existing moral norms, because they may be inadequate for an understanding of your needs, or rely on what you want, because that may not be what you need. Here I am left completely to my own devices. 17 Løgstrup thus focuses on the ethical demand as arising from actual relationships, and this means that he is able to provide us with a story about how we can come to establish the content of our ethical responsibility. The radical demand says that we are to care for the other person in a way that best serves his or her interest. It says that but nothing more. What this means in a given situation a person must discover for herself in terms of her own selflessness and in light of her own understanding of life (1997, 55). Of course, Løgstrup still insists that the demand does not have a specified content; it is in that sense silent. In the reference to actual relations of trust, we do however find available resources for development of an understanding of what the demand amounts to that Lévinas could not draw on. The first resource is a comprehensible aim for ethical obligation, namely the interest, the good, the life of the other. The second thing we can turn to is an understanding of what is at play in the actual relationship and the situation that we face. As Pahuus remarks, according to Løgstrup, [...] ethical choice is a limited choice. A person involved in ethical deliberation is the object of an appeal or a challenge implicit in the situation itself. The appeal [...] is what gives the situation its weight. The immediate discernment of this appeal is what ethical understanding is about (2007, 29

16 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH ). The third resource is my particular understanding of this aim, my own view on and understanding of life (livsanskuelse). Of course, the task of coming to the right understanding of my obligation to the other on the basis of my limited understanding of life in general and the other s life in particular is not easy, Løgstrup tells us again and again. What is important here is that it is fortunately also not impossible. When I am faced with the ethical demand, it returns me to the particular relation that exists between the other and me; it simply points out that I hold his or her particular life in my hand. This means that I have a number of very concrete questions to ask such as What would be the best for him or her? or How do I best achieve that? that we can sum up in Løgstrup s favourite question: How do I best take care of the other s life? In answering these questions, I draw on my own understanding of life, but, of course, also on my understanding of the other, of the kind of person he or she is, of the kind of life he or she inhabits. This means that I have even more resources to draw on, knowledge about [...] the dangers her life holds [...]. The content of her life, her expectations and problems, but also about the human relationships and institutions in which she is reared and of which she becomes a part as well as the social norms which protect the various human relations and institutions whose spiritual content has determined the content of the other person s life (1997, 58). Thus, Løgstrup provides us with an answer to Wittgenstein s content-challenge. V. STRICTLY RELATIONAL APPROACHES TO ETHICAL OBLIGATION: LØGSTRUP AND WITTGENSTEIN A central insight of Løgstrup s position is that ethical responsibility arises, not from how one entity relates to another, but rather from the nature of the relationship itself, the trust between human beings. This trust is, as we saw above, always a particular trusting relationship, and only as such does it come to have content. We can, however, make another general 30

17 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION observation. In Løgstrup s thinking, the fact of the relationship, the trust and the demand, comes first, not the parts. This means (i) that the fact of the relationship is the only element necessary in order to account for the ethical demand, and (ii) that it is only from this relationship and the demand that we are able to distinguish the parts, the subject and the object. We can use this characterisation of Løgstrup s conception of ethics to help us to come to clarity about a difference between two types of relational views of ethical obligation. According to views of the first type, ethical obligation arises because one element necessarily relates to another, fundamentally different, element, and in this case, the characteristics of the two elements determine the nature of the particular relation between them. These theories thus introduce three necessary elements in their conception of ethics, as we see it illustrated for example in the theory of Lévinas, the subject, the other and the way the two are related. We can call this a tripartite relational view of ethical obligation. According to views of the second type, the relation itself is primary and fundamental, and everything else is understood from that relation. That is, only because of the relation do the elements come into character; only because of the relation can they be differentiated. Let us call this second group strictly relational views, as they do indeed establish their account of ethical obligation only with reference to a relation. Løgstrup is a representative of this second type of view. This distinction between tripartite and strictly relational views still concerns theories at an extremely general level. This means, of course, that we are here disregarding a world of nuance in the thinking of both Lévinas and Løgstrup. However, there are at least two reasons to claim that a proper understanding of this difference is still important. It is important, first, because it helps us, as we have seen, to understand that there is indeed a difference between Lévinas and Løgstrup s conceptions of ethical responsibility, something that is sometimes underappreciated. 18 Second, because it shows that the thinking of Løgstrup offers us a 31

18 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 possibility not found in that of Lévinas to see ethics as springing from our relations and to understand the subject and object from a shared relation, their mutual interdependency in trust. This type of theory, where the philosopher thinks from the shared condition or interdependency, is rare in ethics and elsewhere. However, there is reason to insist that Wittgenstein s later philosophy is another prominent example of this type. In fact, the opening of the Philosophical Investigations displays a striking contrast between an individualistic and strictly relational approach to language. In 1, we are presented with a subject, Augustine, who looks out as a child from an individual perspective, trying from there to account for a common practice: When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered. In 2, in the very first languagegame that Wittgenstein introduces, the perspective has changed considerably. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words block, pillar, slab, beam. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. Conceive this as a complete primitive language (PI, 2). What we see here, as well as numerous other places in the Philosophical Investigations, is that Wittgenstein begins with the relation the interdependency, the practice, the activity, the mutually shared ground and its particular nature and aim and only from that goes on to describe the elements. In 2, what is given is the practice of building, and A and B come into being only through their participation in this practice. Of course, the language-game of 2 is only a rudimentary, or as Wittgenstein calls it, primitive language, but still, the contrast to the approach to language exemplified in the quote from Augustine is obvious. Wittgenstein 32

19 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION tries to take seriously the insight that even if we come to awareness of the world as subjects, it is a world in which we already find ourselves embedded in and dependent on relationships to others; a world that, as Løgstrup frames it, we have not ourselves ordered. The second reason why a proper understanding of the difference between tripartite and strictly relational views is important is that only a strictly relational viewpoint will enable us to understand and describe a number of phenomena in ethics that normally appear to us as puzzling, especially the puzzle, connected to ethical obligation, of how an apparently external objective demand can come to be real for a subject. Following the lead of Løgstrup and Wittgenstein may help us see a way out of this particular maze because they demonstrate how such responsibility and obligation arise from relations in which the subject is already a part. What Wittgenstein and Løgstrup show us is that relations always come infused with a normative structure. Some relations establish forms of conditional normativity, e.g. the normativity involved in the praxis of building, other relations establish forms of unconditional, ethical normativity, e.g. relations of trust between human beings. However, this kinship between conditional and unconditional forms of normativity implies that Wittgenstein s investigation of the many different normative orders of human activities such as reading aloud (PI ) or making ostensive definitions (PI 27-34) may prove to be an invaluable source of inspiration in investigations of strictly relational forms of ethical normativity and obligation. Collectively, these points show us an unexplored potential in a strictly relational approach to ethical obligation and normativity. The point, however, is not to argue that all phenomena of ethical life ought to be understood from a strictly relational perspective. Instead, the aim has been to argue that such a perspective is sadly overlooked, that it might be developed into a remarkably fruitful position for the understanding of ethical phenomena, and that Løgstrup and Wittgenstein provide us with invaluable resources in this endeavour. What they show us is that some forms 33

20 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH 2015 of normativity and obligation exist, not by being in some sense established by the subject or by the object or as Lévinas would describe it by the relation between a subject and the other, but rather from our mutual endeavours and relations. WORKS CITED Andersen, Svend In the Eyes of a Lutheran Philosopher: How Løgstrup Treated Moral Thinkers. In Concern for the Other: Perspectives in the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup. Edited by Svend Andersen and Kees van Kooten Niekerk, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Attridge, Derek The Singularity of Literature. London: Routledge. Anscombe, G.E.M Modern Moral Philosophy. Philosophy 33/124: Christensen, Anne-Marie S. 2011a. Wittgenstein and Ethics. In Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein. Edited by Oskari Kuusela and Marie McGinn, Oxford University Press. Christensen, Anne-Marie S. 2011b. A Glorious Sun and a Bad Person : Wittgenstein, Ethical Reflection and the Other. Philosophia. Philosophical Quarterly of Israel 39/2: Critchley, Simon Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of Commitment: Politics of Resistance. London: Verso. Fink, Hans The Conception of Ethics and the Ethical in K.E. Løgstrup s The Ethical Demand. In Concern for the Other: Perspectives in the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup. Edited by Svend Andersen and Kees van Kooten Niekerk, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Fink, Hans Efterskrift. In K.E. Løgstrup, Den etiske fordring. Aarhus: Klim. Fink, Hans and Alasdair MacIntyre Introduction. In K.E. Løgstrup The Ethical Demand, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Hume, David /1978. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon. Hume, David. 1777/1978. Enquiries Concerning the Principles of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon. Kant, Immanuel. 1785/2011. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Hamburg: Tredition. Lévinas, Emmanuel Totality and Infinity, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Lévinas, Emmanuel Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Lévinas, Emmanuel Ethics as First Philosophy. In The Lévinas Reader. Edited by Sean Hand, Oxford: Blackwell. Lévinas, Emmanuel Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other. London: Athlone. Løgstrup, K.E The Exaggeration of the Importance of Principles in Moral Reasoning. Man and World: An International Philosophical Review 1/3:

21 ANNE-MARIE CHRISTENSEN RELATIONAL VIEWS OF ETHICAL OBLIGATION Løgstrup, K. E The Ethical Demand, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods: Two Moral Philosophies. European Journal of Philosophy 18/1: Pahuus, Anne Marie The Use of Principles in Ethical Situations. A Response to Almond. In Concern for the Other. Perspectives in the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup. Edited by Svend Andersen and Kees van Kooten Niekerk, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Overgaard, Søren Wittgenstein and Other Minds: Rethinking Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity with Wittgenstein, Levinas, and Husserl. New York: Routledge. Perpich, Diane The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Cambridge, MA: Stanford University Press. Rawls, John A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scanlon, T.M What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stern, Robert Does Ought Imply Can? And Did Kant Think It Does? Utilitas 16/1: Stern, Robert Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by David F. Pears and Brian F. McGuinness. London: Routledge. Wittgenstein, Ludwig A Lecture on Ethics. Philosophical Review 74/1: Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Edited by Brian F. McGuinness. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein s Lectures. Cambridge Edited by Alice Ambrose. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. In Werkausgabe Bd. 3. Edited by Friedrich Waismann, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Culture and Value. Edited by Georg H. von Wright. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig Private and Public Occasions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. NOTES 1. Work on this article was made possible partly because of funding provided by The Carlsberg Foundation. Previous versions of the paper were presented at The Fifth Symposium of the Nordic Wittgenstein Society (University of Stavanger) and the conference Moral Obligation (Aarhus University) held in honour of Hans Fink. I thank the audience at these occasions for their helpful comments and suggestions. 35

22 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH It is unclear how we should apply the distinction to certain forms of virtue ethics, for example. 3. This also means that the phrase ethical obligation in this context does not imply a necessary reference to laws or duties. Moreover, the term ethical is used in order to distinguish the ethical source of obligation and responsibility from the form that such obligation may eventually take for example in moral norms and conventions. This use of ethics and ethical can also be found in the two main proponents of relational views treated here, namely Lévinas and Løgstrup. 4. This, of course, is only a sketchy presentation of problems facing individualistic views of ethical obligation, and it is not in any way meant to imply that such problems cannot be overcome. The question of the problems facing a Kantian position is rather complicated. Kant proposes a compelling way to secure the objectivity of ethics by invoking the idea of the moral law inherent in reason, allowing for the rational self-legislation of the subject. Still, Elizabeth Anscombe famously challenged Kant s idea to secure the objectivity of ethical obligation by objecting that legislation is possible only as far as there is superior power in the legislator (1958, 2). Moreover, Kant s proposal depends on a metaphysically loaded view of the human being abandoned by most Kantians today in favour of a view of the subject s self-legislation as establishing personally binding forms of obligation (see especially the discussion of Rawls reading of Kant in Stern [2012, chapter 1]). This does mean, however, that constructivist Kantians face the problem of how selfobligation can become ethical obligation Anscombe s challenge to an even greater degree than did Kant. 5. The remark is from around I present a fuller understanding of this point in Christensen (2011a, ; 2011b). See also Overgaard (2007, ). 6. Whether Wittgenstein rejects the idea of normative moral philosophy is a complicated matter fully dependent on what we take to mean by the phrase. Wittgenstein rejects the idea that moral philosophy can develop a practical guide for action, but he instead insists that moral philosophy can elucidate ethics as it presents itself to us (for example in his lecture, see Wittgenstein s Lectures [WL , 31-32]). However, to elucidate ethics is of course also to describe it as normative and obliging in particular ways, and as far as describing obliging features of ethics amounts to doing normative moral philosophy, Wittgenstein does not reject it. Due to the ambiguity in how we should understand Wittgenstein s view of normative moral philosophy, I avoid the phrase altogether. Still, in this regard, Wittgenstein s conception of ethics is rather similar to that of Løgstrup s. As Fink notes, The ethical Demand provides no, or very minimal, guidance for setting up a system of positive law, and it can never be used to justify setting up a system of positive law. It is largely a matter of reminding us to ask ourselves what impact our action has on the other person (2007, 22). See also Løgstrup (2007, 20-27) and Fink (2010, ) as well as the in this context very suggestive title of one of Løgstrup s few text in English The Exaggeration of the Importance of Principles in Moral Reasoning (1968). 7. See also 1994, 83, where Lévinas presents the same point, [...] in its expression, the face before me summons me, calls for me, begs for me, as if the invisible death that must be faced by the Other, pure otherness, separated, in some way, from any whole, were my business. 36