The Ethical Demand

Knud Ejler Løgstrup, Hans Fink, Hans Fink

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9780268161262
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Knud Ejler Løgstrup's The Ethical Demand is the most original influential Danish contribution to moral philosophy in this century. This is the first time that the complete text has been available in English translation. Originally published in 1956, it has again become the subject of widespread interest in Europe, now read in the context of the whole of Løgstrup's work. The Ethical Demand marks a break not only with utilitarianism and with Kantianism but also with Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism and with all forms of subjectivism. Yet Løgstrup's project is not destructive. Rather, it is a presentation of an alternative understanding of interpersonal life. The ethical demand presupposes that all interaction between human beings involves a basic trust. Its content cannot be derived from any rule. For Løgstrup, there is not Christian morality and secular morality. There is only human morality.

1

THE FACT WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF THE SILENT DEMAND

1. The trust which, on a basic understanding, belongs to human existence

It is a characteristic of human life that we normally encounter one another with natural trust. This is true not only in the case of persons who are well acquainted with one another but also in the case of complete strangers. Only because of some special circumstance do we ever distrust a stranger in advance. Perhaps a general climate of informing on each other has destroyed the natural trust which people spontaneously have toward one another, so that their relationship becomes oppressive and strained. Perhaps because of strife in the land, where the land is ruled by men who have no respect for law and justice, people lose confidence in one another. Under normal circumstances, however, we accept the stranger’s word and do not mistrust him until we have some particular reason to do so. We never suspect a person of falsehood until after we have caught him in a lie. If we enter into conversation on the train with a person whom we have never met before and about whom we know absolutely nothing, we assume that what he says is true and do not become suspicious of him unless he begins to indulge in wild exaggerations. Nor do we normally assume a person to be a thief; not until he conducts himself in a suspicious manner do we begin to suspect him. Initially we believe one another’s word; initially we trust one another. This may indeed seem strange, but it is a part of what it means to be human. Human life could hardly exist if it were otherwise. We would simply 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.

To trust, however, is to lay oneself open.¹ This is why we react vehemently when our trust is “abused,” as we say, even though it may have been only in some inconsequential matter. Abused trust is trust that is turned against the person who does the trusting. The embarrassment and danger to which we are subjected by the abuse is bad enough. But even worse is the fact that our trust was scorned by the other person. For the other person to have been able to abuse it, our trust must simply have left him or her cold. However much he or she may seem to have accepted it outwardly, he or she did not actually accept it but merely exploited it. And it is a question whether it is not the indifference thus manifested toward us in his or her abuse of our trust, even more than the unpleasant consequences of the abuse itself, which evokes our bitter reaction.

That trust and the self-surrender that goes with it are a basic part of human life is seen not only when trust is abused. We see it fully as much in those conflicts which are caused not by one person having wronged another, but by a collision between their two spirits and worlds.

The peculiar point here is that although the collision is due to the fact that a purely personal expectation is not fulfilled by the other person, it takes the form of moral accusations—even though moral evaluations of the other person’s behavior are quite beside the point and the accusations themselves are therefore obviously unreasonable. Why is this? We need to know the answer. We need to explain why conflicts which in themselves have nothing to do with morality or immorality, with right or wrong, but which are entirely due to a difference between our respective spirits and worlds—why these conflicts nevertheless turn into questions of sheer morality and self-righteousness and cause reproaches and accusations which are plainly unreasonable.

An expectation which requires that the other person personally fulfill it usually makes itself apparent in one way or another, perhaps through general attitude or conduct, or perhaps indeed through particular word or action. Whatever its form, whether articulated or silent, the expectation manifests itself on the presupposition that the other person is to fulfill the expectation. This is to say that by manifesting the expectation one has already surrendered oneself to the other person—even before it is certain that there will be any fulfillment. In other words, the manifestation is necessary for bringing about the fulfillment—perhaps simply in order to make the other person aware of what we expect from him or her.

Now, if the fulfillment does not take place, the manifestation is in vain and perhaps meaningless. But what is worse is the fact that in the manifestation one has laid oneself open. One’s expectation, exposed through its manifestation, has not been covered by the other person’s fulfillment of it. And it is this exposure which causes the encounter to erupt in moral reproaches and accusations.

When one has dared to come forward in the hope of being accepted, and then is not accepted, this gives the conflict such an emotional character that even though no one has done anything wrong, one must turn it into the kind of conflict that results from the other person’s having committed a wrong. One finds it necessary to invent a suffered wrong by which to motivate his strong and deep emotional reaction. In short, it is the emotional element in the situation which causes one to grasp at the moral reproaches and accusations which, precisely because of their moral character, are emotionally loaded.

The simple conflict within a conflict, namely, that one has dared to come forward in the hope of being accepted but was not accepted, makes everything either black or white and makes one’s accusation correspondingly irrevocable. For it is precisely to the degree that things are black or white in our moral evaluations, that our moral accusations become irrevocable.²

But there is a third reason why the conflict vents itself in moral accusations. It must at all costs never become apparent to the other person, and preferably not even to ourselves, that it is a matter of disappointed expectation, because though we have been exposed we are at pains not to admit it. We would much rather admit blemishes and weaknesses, mistakes and stupidities than admit to our having laid ourselves open. The collision in the encounter must therefore be covered up. It must be externalized even though we may have to go far afield for the reproaches and may have to invent the most unreasonable accusations in an effort to cover up the real conflict. The accusations, having nothing really to do with morality, betray the fact that it is a matter of a conflict which at all costs must be covered up, even at the cost of our having to invent the most absurd accusations.³

If communication between persons in conflict with each other is cut off, sparks of moral reproach and accusation begin to fly, because there is self-surrender in all forms of communication. Rejected self-surrender expresses itself in moral accusations because the situation is emotional and plain, and because the exposure must at all costs be kept covered up.

In E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End we have the account of a rift between Leonard Bast and the Schlegel sisters. Their respective milieus were as different from one another as they could possibly be. Leonard was a penniless office clerk whose married life was very drab and whose entire existence would be bleak indeed were it not for his consuming interest in culture. However, he was not equal to this interest; his hunger for books and music was and remained artificial. The Schlegel sisters, on the other hand, had never known anything but economic security. They were fairly wealthy. Since they had grown up in an atmosphere of cultural appreciation and had become the center of a large social group where these things were discussed, their life was rich in terms of experience and delightful variety.

On an altogether casual occasion Leonard Bast came into contact with the Schlegel sisters. He received an invitation to an afternoon tea with them. It turned out to be a fiasco. Leonard was disappointed in his expectations for the afternoon. He had hoped to discuss books and to keep his visit with them in a romantic vein and at all costs to keep it from getting mixed up with his routine, uninteresting life at the office.

The Schlegel sisters had an entirely different purpose in inviting him, however, a very practical purpose, namely, to get him out of the firm in which he was employed inasmuch as they had secret information that the firm was about to go bankrupt. And they had another, an indirect, purpose too: to help him in his interest in culture, because though his love of books was artificial they detected that underneath there lay a desire for authenticity.

The ensuing conflict was inevitable. It could not be warded off. For the Schlegel sisters’ idea in issuing the invitation was entirely different from Leonard’s idea in accepting it. The two parties were blind to one another’s world. Leonard’s anticipation of an afternoon devoted to the cultural aspect of his life blinded him to the Schlegel sisters’ desire to help him. Disappointed and embittered, he was carried away with outrageous and stupid accusations that they had low motives in inviting him, namely, that they wanted to use him for spying upon his firm. As for the Schlegel sisters themselves, not until afterwards did they have any inkling of the two worlds in Leonard’s life and of how important it was for him to keep them isolated from each other.

Leonard Bast and the Schlegel sisters disagreed about many things, but it was not an objective disagreement which caused the collision between them. Nor was the collision caused by one of them committing wrong and the other being wronged. Rather it was because Leonard was disappointed in his expectation that the Schlegel sisters would satisfy his cultural craving by engaging him in conversation about books. This they did not do. And morality struck like lightening.

Those who are implicated in it never, or at least very seldom, are aware that the conflict has nothing to do with right or wrong. Only observers on the outside who have an incisive insight into the worlds of both parties—dramatists and novelists, theatergoers and readers—are able to see this.

The basic character of trust is revealed in yet another way. In love and sympathy there is no impulse to investigate the other person’s character. We do not construct an image of who he or she is. In the event that we already have such an image, it is only of those features which immediately stand out. We are aware only of those peculiarities which force themselves upon our attention. Of ourselves we make no conscious effort, for the simple reason that there has been nothing about the other to arouse our suspicion.

If, on the other hand, we are not in sympathy with the other person, or if there is a certain tension between us and the other because of something about the other regarding which we are uncertain or against which we react with irritation, dissatisfaction, or antipathy, then we begin to form a picture of the other’s character. We then begin to see in him or her a variety of dispositions because we are on our guard.

However, when we are in direct association with that person this picture usually breaks down; the personal presence erases it. It is not erased because of any particular words, deeds, or conduct; this would of course only mean that the facts contradict the picture we have had of the other, forcing us either to correct it or to set it aside entirely. No, it means something altogether different. It means that the actual presence of the other person leaves no room for a mere picture. His or her presence and my picture of him or her are irreconcilable. They exclude each other, and it is the picture that must give way. Only where the proof of his or her unreliability has in the most positive sense become an ingrown distrust, or where the irritation and antipathy have shut me off completely, does the picture continue to stand.

Why does the picture break down? This is a difficult question to answer, because what happens in this connection is something basic, something anterior to all morality and convention. An adequate account is impossible. Only through paraphrase and metaphor, only by approaching the phenomenon from different angles are we able to suggest the answer.

To associate with or encounter personally another person always means to be “in the power of” his or her words and conduct. Psychology refers to this as the power of suggestion. There are many degrees of suggestion. It may be very weak, only strong enough to understand what the other person says and does, or it may be so strong that we are, as we say, grasped, or captured or devoured.

But it is even more basic than this. Not to let the other person emerge through words, deeds, and conduct, but to hinder this instead by our suspicion and by the picture we have formed of him or her as a result of our antipathy is a denial of life. It is in the very nature of human existence that it does not want to be reduced to reactions—even wise reactions—which are determined solely by what has already happened. It is in the very nature of human existence that it wants to be just as new as the other person’s new words, new deeds, and new conduct. We assume, as it were, that because they are contemporary they are new, and so we also insist upon taking a similarly new attitude to them. We might call this a trust in life itself, in the ongoing renewal of life. Later we discover that the words, deeds, and conduct were after all not new, and we vow that we will never again let ourselves be tricked or fooled or be naive or in any other way let our trust get the better of us.⁴

In its basic sense trust is essential to every conversation. In conversation as such we deliver ourselves over into the hand of another. This is evident in the fact that in the very act of addressing a person we make a certain demand of him. This demand is not merely for a response to what we say. And the self-surrender is not essentially a matter of what is said: its content or importance or even intimate character. What happens is that simply in addressing the other, irrespective of the importance of the content of what we say, a certain note is struck through which we, as it were, step out of ourselves in order to exist in the speech relationship. For this reason the point of the demand—though unarticulated—is that the speaker is accepted as the note struck by the speaker’s address is accepted. For a person inadvertently or even intentionally not to hear the note in what we say, therefore, means that it is we ourselves who are being ignored, provided it is we ourselves who dared to make the overture. That all speech takes place in such fundamental trust is evident in the fact that the most casual comment takes on a false note if one believes that it is not accepted in the sense that it is intended.

A particular point of the analysis we have made thus far—one might call it an analysis of a phenomenological character—is in fact supported by such sciences as psychology and psychiatry. Their investigations have clearly shown how a child’s life may be permanently determined by the manner in which adults behave toward him or her. For example, one might mention parents’ ambitious pride in relation to their children. In the ambiguity of everyday living this is regarded as very commendable, but humanly speaking it is to the detriment of the children because it can result in an upbringing which deprives them, perhaps forever, of something of paramount importance, namely, joy in living, the courage to be. This is due not least of all to the fact that the child, in contradistinction to the adult, is never able to trust only partially. To trust with reservation is possible only for one who has learned to hold back something of him or herself. But this the child has not learned consciously and deliberately to do. For him or her reservation takes place as a matter of psychic automatism. This is why the disappointed trust, restlessness, and insecurity which go with it create in the child far-reaching and fateful consequences.

Although it is in the child’s relation to the adult that the one is surrendered to the other in the most far-reaching and fateful sense—which is why science has here been able to establish it—it is nonetheless in one degree or another true also of all the relationships in which we deal with one another. A person never has something to do with another person without also having some degree of control over him or her. It may be a very small matter, involving only a passing mood, a dampening or quickening of spirit, a deepening or removal of some dislike. But it may also be a matter of tremendous scope, such as can determine if the life of the other flourishes or not.

Unconsciously, we nonetheless have the strange notion that the rest of us are not part of another person’s world. We have the curious idea that a person constitutes his own world, and that the rest of us have no part in it but only touch upon it now and then. If the encounter between persons therefore means, as it normally does, nothing more than that their respective worlds touch upon each other and then continue unaffected on their separate courses, the encounter can hardly be very important. According to this reasoning, it is only when a person accidentally breaks into another person’s world with good or bad intentions that anything important is at stake.

This is really a curious idea, an idea no less curious because we take it for granted. The fact is, however, that it is completely wrong because we do indeed constitute one another’s world and destiny. There are many reasons why we usually ignore this fact.

It is a common observation that the most elementary phenomena of our existence are the ones we are least aware of. It should be added that the phenomenon we are discussing here is highly disquieting. For the sake of our own peace of mind it is perhaps fortunate that we are not more aware of the extent to which, by what we were or said or did in our relationship with them, we have actually determined other people’s joy or pain in living, their sincerity or duplicity.

In describing the nature of trust, we have in the foregoing used several different expressions. We have spoken of a person surrendering himself, of his going out of himself, of his placing something of his own life into the hands of the other person. These expressions are metaphorical and subject to misunderstanding. In order to avoid one serious misunderstanding, one that is easily suggested by the metaphors themselves, it should be said that trust does not mean to turn oneself inside out. Trust has nothing to do with the abandonment of all spiritual reticence. To surrender oneself by turning oneself inside out in the presence of another does not require trust. In fact this sort of thing is rarely even related to trust; it usually demands nothing of the other person except that he play the role of an observer.

It is quite another thing, however, to surrender oneself in that trust of the other person whereby a requirement is always imposed upon him insofar as one comes to him with an expectation. In expecting something of the other person we undertake an action which amounts to a delivering of ourselves over into his hand. This self-surrender, whatever form it may take, need not necessarily mean that we confide in the other person. It can of course mean that too, but it can also mean all kinds of other things; for example, it may mean that we rely upon him to speak the truth, or that in speaking to him we adopt a particular tone of voice. Correspondingly it means that the self-exposure, through the trust which was not accepted, consists in one’s having risked the chance of being rejected. It has nothing to...