Being ethical

A byte-sized reflection on Milbank's "The Midwinter Sacrifice": I am recalled to Azzopardi's observation, the only reason for doing good is that it is good to do good; or to reading Sartre somewhere to the effect that the true heroes are the atheists, who do good without hope of any reward. Milbank counters this kind of thinking - or at least certainly Sartre - vigorously. To quote Milbank:

"This complex of ideas, or characterization of the ethical as gift-exchange, feast, marriage, and resurrection, I am seeking to set in deliberate opposition to a recent consensus which would try to understand the ethical as primarily self-sacrifice for the other, without any necessary 'return' issuing from the other back to oneself." (122)

Not even a reflection, really, but merely an observation, that Milbank vigorously contradicts what I have taken so far as - a piece of wisdom. Undigested, fully, certainly. But then - I do recall having found texts in the gospels that echo this piece. Which I do not now recall.

Milbank, in fact, extends the ideas he is opposing to arrive explicitly at the position of Sartre. The consensus (mentioned above), he says, involved a complex of ideas:

1. The notion that only an entirely sacrificial giving without any expectation of counter-gift distinguishes the gift from a form of self-interested contract.
2. Death, far from being complicit with evil (as Milbank would understand it to be), is the necessary condition for the event of the ethical as such.
3. God must be reduced to a shadowy hypostatized other lurking behind the human other, because any God who interfered to 'reward' the disinterested giver would undo the purity of this disinterest and the purity of the ethical realm.
4. Hence the paradoxical conclusion: the true nobility and purity of religious self-sacrifice is only realized in a secular sphere. 

These positions, observes Milbank, are common to Patocka, Derrida, and probably Levinas, while the first point is espoused by Marion without seeing that they logically lead to the other three. 

The self and the good

In the opening chapter of Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor notes that it is not possible to get clear about the 'modern identity' - about the human agent, person, or self - "without some further understanding of how our pictures of the good have evolved. Selfhood and the good, or in another way selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes." (Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996] 3)

But there is another obstacle to this task:

Much contemporary moral philosophy, particularly but not only in the English-speaking world, has given such a narrow focus to morality that some of the crucial connections I want to draw here are incomprehensible in its terms. This moral philosophy has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on defining the content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life; and it has no conceptual place left for a notion of the good as the object of our love and allegiance.... (3)

As I begin to teach Moral Theology to the FMA novices here in Nashik, relying on notes that I had made 20 years ago, I realize how very true this is: the whole approach of my notes - derived from theology classes at Kristu Jyoti College? - is a focus on the moral act rather than on the nature of the good life.... And that was the focus also of Azzopardi's Ethics in JDV...

So is Taylor making common cause with MacIntyre, at least on this point?

And what might be the position of Giuseppe Abba, a much neglected figure in contemporary virtue ethics, not even finding mention in the current article on the topic in the Wikipedia?

The messiness of the human good

Eugene Ahner pointed out yesterday that ideas are abstract, but the good is concrete, which is why ideas can be clear and wonderful, but the good tends to be messy and ambiguous. Which explains why a thousand reasons can be brought against concrete realities like the Church, and religious congregations, and any concrete action. Any good short of God will be less than fully good, and therefore susceptible to criticism. But humility - recognition of our creature status - demands that we act and do the good that has been assigned to us. We are not the Messiah; we are part of the Body that is the Church, with our particular roles and tasks.

Good vs Right

Is there such a radical contrast between 'teleological' and 'deontological' as Keith proposed in his lecture?

The former seems to have suffered in his / Ricoeur's presentation: concern with the 'good' is static, conservative, rule-bound, and even at times violent. Concern with 'duty', instead, is concern with the right thing to do, and not merely the established 'good' thing.

I guess all these terms are so fluid that each philosopher can give his/her own meaning to them... So we would have to find out what really Ricoeur meant, before agreeing/disagreeing with him.

I would like to find out Ashley's comments on the matter. Virtue ethics seems to be a concentration on the 'good.'