Some Notes on Orthodox Ethics and Existential Authenticity
Edward Moore, S.T.L.
St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology
Introduction
The philosophical mood or attitude known as Existentialism is, at first glance, quite incompatible with the basic tenets of the Christian faith. For example, the Existentialist notion of "authentic existence" precludes the outright acceptance of any ‘objective’ moral standards for living, since a main component of Existentialist philosophy is that the individual must be self-constituting. Anyone who depends upon so-called objective ethical or moral norms to determine his existence is considered by the Existentialist to be in "bad faith" (mauvaise conscience).
As S. Harakas has pointed out, the "Christian Church has never felt that there was something ‘inauthentic’ and inappropriate about providing ethical direction to others."1 However, what Harakas fails to consider is that the Christian ethic is properly understood as applying only to the one who has already achieved a modicum of authentic existence. As P. Ricoeur has explained, only the individual who has experienced the intellectual darkness and despair of atheism, and its ontological implications, can fully experience the glory of the Christian faith.2
The Christian, as J. Macquarrie pointed out, shares with the atheist the basic fact of their shared humanity or being-in-the-world.3 From the atheist’s perspective - assuming he is an Existentialist - the Christian is living in "bad faith," enslaved to the outmoded morality of a book written nearly two millennia ago. From the Christian’s perspective, the Existentialist atheist is blind to the reality of human subjection to sin, and fails to grasp the divine legacy open to all human beings. Any debate between the atheist and the Christian will break down on this very point: the notion of an eschatological or teleological culmination of human existence. For the atheist cannot subscribe to any teleological dogmas, and the Christian cannot, we might believe, abandon them.
My purpose in this paper is to argue that a Christian ethic can stand and even prevail in the face of an atheistic worldview, not by rejecting the Existentialist philosophy, but by embracing it. As I will argue, Christianity is the true and authentic Existentialist philosophy; for Christianity does not stop at the affirmation of the precedence of existence over essence, but embraces and proclaims essence as the future and shared possibility of all humanity. Therefore, the Christian Existentialist does not desire to flee from the Other, but rather to embrace communality and inter-human experience as the very ground of individuality. It is from within the collectivity of individual beings that the person emerges as a "unique and unrepeatable entity."4
I.
Pascal, a precursor of contemporary Existentialism, described the forlornness of the human being who has been "[c]ast into the infinite immensity of spaces,"5 where he is filled with dread.6 In contemporary Existentialism this dread is described as a disorientation of the individual, who feels as if he has been "thrown" into existence, without any decision on his part. Heidegger referred to this feeling as Geworfenheit or "thrownness," and Sartre described its effect upon the individual as "nausea," or the sickening feeling that our existence is not our own to will, but determined by others. This feeling of "thrownness" and "nausea" - which was felt by the Gnostics and Manichaeans long before the advent of Existentialism - easily leads to a dualistic conception of reality, in which "good" and "evil" are posited as polar opposites, at war with one another, and determining the concrete existence of the individual accordingly.7 St. Paul, however, had the critical insight to know that "good" and "evil" are not metaphysical forces, but rather inclinations present within each human being - for each human being is a composite of soul and body, intellect and flesh.
As the Apostle so stridently expressed:
... I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right,
but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,
but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. (Rom 7:18-23 RSV)
We note here that Paul is locating the existential disorientation not in our stance toward the world or reality, but in our very psycho-physical constitution. What Paul knows in his mind or soul to be good is incapable of being enacted due to the negative influence of the flesh. The "flesh," for Paul, is more than our actual physical substance. When he mentions sarx, he is referring to all principles of limitation that are always at work in the composite human being. Therefore, when we experience that existential disorientation or "nausea," what we are reacting to is not our environment, but the constitution of our very selves! It is not the world or other people holding me back and thwarting my highest aspirations - it is my very psycho-physical makeup!
This psycho-physical constitution of the human being must not be mythologized as the result of some prior fall or error committed by "primal man," for to do so is to risk exonerating ourselves from the demand of existence, which is to strive continually for intellectual perfection, or theôsis.8 To elaborate, if we explain our present condition as the result of a prior fall, then our only proper response is to work to regain our supposed prior state of purity in God’s eyes. This is the epitome of "bad faith," for we are denying or ignoring the very use-value of the existence that God has bestowed upon us.9 When we look closely at the Pauline passage, we note a strong sense of personal responsibility not only to God, but to ourselves.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom 7:24-25 RSV)
When referring to the "law of God" Paul invokes his own self (egô anthrôpos) and his mind (nous) as the active agent; however, when referring to the "law of sin" he speaks only of the flesh (sarx). The rule of the flesh is also the rule of the world, or what Zizioulas has termed the "biological hypostasis."
The one who exists according to the "biological hypostasis" is the one who has identified himself with the immediate gratification of the fleshly realm - e.g., the one who exists only for his family, career, and the occasional hedonistic leisurely jaunt: he is the one who is enslaved to his own flesh.10 This is the one who, as Jesus Himself declared, is incapable of hating "his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life," and, for that reason, is incapable of being a true disciple of Christ.11
However, there is another one, who exists according to the demands of the Other - not an other understood as an authoritative or commanding figure, but an other who responds equally to my presence in the world, just as I respond to his. When this Other is perceived as a collectivity of worldly beings for and with whom I readily exist, the concept of ekklêsia is born - i.e., the realization that reflective human beings form a community of those who have responded to a calling: the calling out that gathers together. This is the very essence of the Church, or ekklêsia. Moreover, this is the call of Being, or God - the unpredicable force or energy that determines being(s).
All responses to this call are different, yet all are eminently valuable from an ontological perspective, for all derive from a pre-ontological orientation of the self toward the world. The self is a work in progress, an effort toward actualization, in which no essence is to be found. Essence is, so to speak, the end of the road, the goal achieved. Yet it may easily lead to a gaol - a prison for the soul - when it is not approached as the outcome of an ontologically indeterminate project. As St. Paul counseled the striving soul, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."12 The fear of the soul, and the source of its trembling, is not some sort of physical harm, but the realization that the individual endeavor may come to nought, and render the person pointless or meaningless - or, as the Existentialists would say, absurd.
For St. Paul, however, the absurdity of existence resides precisely in our inability to do what the intellect desires. An atheist Existentialist would reply that the desires of the intellect are simply irrational or pointless, and counsel a resolve in the face of death that translates into a so-called "authentic" existence in which I know myself for the self-posited, goal-less individual that I am. Such is indeed the only solution if one leaves love and faith out of the picture. As R. Bultmann has pointed out, the resolution to live a life of faith and love, as well as hope for future glory, is no less authentic a response to man’s being-in-the-world than the resolution in the face of death to exist as a self-positing, groundless entity.13 The Christian position, based on the writings of St. Paul, is to be preferred, for it leads to an ethical life of concern for other beings based not on one’s need for recognition and mutual positing, but rather on the basis of our status as unique, unrepeatable entities whose authenticity rests in our relationship to the personalized, internalized Being of God.
II.
According to Harakas, "[t]he first chapter of the Gospel of John is the ultimate refutation of the existentialist refusal to accept truth as substantive reality."14 What this statement fails to recognize is that no reflective Orthodox Christian would accept Christ, the Logos or ‘truth of beings,’ as "substantive reality." Rather, the Incarnate Christ, who is both human and divine, is understood as the embodiment of the fully human, containing the realized potential of humanity in their anticipated deified state. This is not "substantive reality," but the recognition of a future that one hopes and strives for; - in short, the Incarnate Christ is the essence preceded by existence,15 for this essence resides in the future, as the goal of the human project, so to speak. Christ preceded us, insofar as He is God; but He beckons us from futurity, insofar as He is the embodiment of the essence or nature of which we will partake when theôsis is achieved by all.16 The name given to this essence by the Evangelist is Logos (logos), or the ordering principle of all things.17
However, as the greatest Church Fathers attest, even though the essence of humanity resides in the future, as something to be attained, there is nevertheless an ontological link or bond (sungeneia) connecting the human present with the divine future. As Zizioulas, discussing Justin Martyr, aptly summarizes:
The permanent sungeneia between God and man through the medium of nous leads us to take the idea of logos, employed by Justin in a christological sense, as the bond between God and the world, between truth and the mind. Christ, as the logos of God, becomes this very link between truth and the mind, and the truth of philosophy is nothing less than part of this logos.18
The truth of Existentialism, then, may be understood as the realization that personal existence precedes the essence derived from an historical and necessarily creative or constitutive engagement with the open arena of the world. Yet when the decision is made, in the face of the world, to exist as a man of faith, the logos intervenes, as the connective principle between that which is concretely present (the world that is before us and in which we are self-present) and the anticipated future that is a projection of our resolute faith, hope, and love (i.e., the life or essence of Christ, in which we strive to partake, as part of the historical project of humanity).
III.
We have seen that the sungeneia connecting the human with the divine is of an intellectual nature, for the bond is established and maintained through mind or nous, i.e., the human being’s reasoning faculty. Since our relationship to God, whose nature we hope to partake of in the future, has an intellectual foundation, so must our relations with others. This is perhaps the most important contribution of an Existentialist interpretation of the Orthodox faith, for it demands that we live according to what Zizioulas has termed the "ecclesial hypostasis," as opposed to the "biological hypostasis."19 The ecclesial hypostasis, as Zizioulas explains, is possible through Baptism, which allows the person to transcend the biological hypostasis. "This means that henceforth [the baptized Christian] can love not because the laws of biology oblige him to do so ... but unconstrained by the natural laws."20
This brings to the fore an essential element of Christianity that I believe is largely lost among mainstream Orthodox Christians - i.e., the profound ontological feeling that this world, with its oppressive natural laws, is not conducive to the highest aspirations of the human soul. As St. Paul states so forcefully and so often, the Christian must not become comfortable in this world, but must bear its burdens while maintaining the faith that he is destined for better things. Here we see what I believe to be the authentic response to our sense of "thrownness" and the resultant disorientation. The non-Christian or atheist response to this disorientation, by comparison, ignores the metaphysical implications of this feeling, for it simply takes at face value the conclusion that humanity does not participate in or bear a meaning uniquely our own; and in the case of non-Christian Existentialism, whatever meaning we create for ourselves only displays the absurdity of existence. The Christian response is not afraid to recognize an atemporal ontology capable of explaining or providing a metaphysical ground for our very real sense of thrownness or disorientation in the face of the world. However, this recognition of an atemporal theology should not stop at the affirmation of creatio ex nihilo, but should focus on the eschatological structure of our self-consciousness and the salvific desires and strivings it produces.
Further, when we accept our authentic condition as sojourners in this world, and not as symbiotic cohabitants, we are forced to undergo a revaluation of values (to borrow Nietzsche’s phrase) and recognize the inauthenticity and harmfulness of that which we often consider to be unquestionable goods: a large family, a large home, monetary wealth, etc. All too often have I heard Orthodox Christians defend their materialism by saying that God intended for us to partake of the good things of the earth. This only serves as a blatant excuse for living an un-Christian life.
And what is a Christian life? Quite simply, a life ruled by reason, or logos. And reason, in the last analysis, serves the purpose of making us uncomfortable in the world, and even fosters a healthy sense of guilt; for example, when I worry that I may be usurping the space of an other, as Levinas would say, or existing in a manner that has a negative impact on the quality of life of my fellow humans, or on the animals and plants and trees with whom I equally share this planet. If our own sense of morality and ethics cannot prevent us from doing harm to our neighbors and to the natural environment, then our sungeneia with God must serve this purpose!
In the last analysis, the ekklêsia of the ecclesial hypostasis is not to be understood as the institutional or ‘canonical’ Church, but rather as the collectivity of all existing things over which God maintains providential care.21 In other words, I bear equal responsibility for my immediate neighbor, and for the unfortunate manatee killed by a sporting boat off the coast of Florida, due, paradoxically, to the fact that I am not responsible for either! Since I did not bring either into the world, I am required to maintain and respect the unique natures of these beings. Gandalf’s reponse to Frodo’s assertion that the unfortunate Gollum deserves death, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterful novel Fellowship of the Ring, partly expresses this sentiment:
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.21
Yet the destruction of life is misguided and sinful not only when it is carried out by way of vengeance, whether state-sanctioned or not, but also when it is done completely by accident.
Harakas distinguishes between "ethical evil" and "natural evil."23 The former is that which has its cause in the intentional activity of the human being; the latter is that which occurs due to the laws of nature. However, even in the latter case, human error often plays a part. The example Harakas gives is the rebuilding of a village at the location of an avalanche, which occurs all the time in the Alps, for example. If human reason were ruling the day, the recognition that the spot is unsafe would prevent future deaths. But there is also a third type of evil, one which is not easily recognized.
This third type of evil is that which is brought about by the interaction of the human being with his environment, precluding any malicious intent. As Harakas explains:
[T]he Church acknowledges, as well, sins which we have not willed, and for which it cannot be said that we are guilty, strictly speaking. Involuntary sins refer to our personal involvement in circumstances and events which are evil, which have caused evil results, yet which we have neither willed, chosen or desired.24
He then goes on to offer an easy exoneration for the individual involved in such ‘involuntary’ sins: sacramental absolution. This solution ignores the fact that no sin is involuntary. The word "voluntary" derives from the Latin voluntas, meaning "choice." No sin that we commit is ever committed without choice. Harakas give the example of a motorist who ‘involuntarily’ strikes and kills a child who darts out into the street. We must keep in mind the fact that this hypothetical motorist chose to drive down this street, at the very time when the tragedy occurred. Guilt and responsibility are not connected with conscious decision; rather, we are guilty simply by the fact of our occupying space in the world - an occupation that may always end up robbing existents of their life. It matters not whether I kill a squirrel or the child of my Orthodox neighbor. In either case my own being has obtruded, sinfully, upon another’s, and I am guilty.
Emmanuel Levinas, one of the most brilliant thinkers of the past century, has eloquently expressed this sentiment:
One has to respond to one’s right to be, not by referring to some abstract and anonymous law, or judicial entity, but because of one’s fear for the Other. My being-in-the-world or my ‘place in the sun’, my being at home, have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing?26
This may seem like excessive hyperbole. Indeed, we may respond with a statement declaring our own individual right to a place in the world, and by insisting that our day-to-day existence is not at all responsible for the oppression and starvation, etc., of people in third world countries. But to do so would be to miss Levinas’ point, which is that our ethical stance should begin with a decision to feel that way, to embrace a guilt for which we are not responsible - in order to grow into ever more responsible and tolerant persons!
The great Church Father, St. Maximus Confessor, understood this, and so he taught the Church that we are all stewards of nature, responsible for raising all of creation to deification. In order to do so, we must begin by bearing the burden of the care and maintenance of all creation. If this involves bearing guilt for the destruction of parts of the creation for which we are not legally responsible, then we must accept that as well. In so doing, the desire to exist as a unique, unrepeatable entity will be fulfilled, for each and every one of us will have played a crucial and indispensable role in the salvation of all creation - and of our own unique person, now fully realized and like unto the divine.
Select Bibliography
Bultmann, Rudolph, Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann, tr. S.M. Ogden (Cleveland: World Publishing Company 1960), pp. 92-110, esp. note 10, p. 96.
Hand, Sean, ed., The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1989).
Harakas, Stanley S., Toward Transfigured Life: The Theoria of Eastern Orthodox Ethics (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Company 1983).
Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion, third edition (Boston: Beacon Press 2001).
Macquarrie, John, Principles of Christian Theology, second edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1977).
Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, tr. A.J. Krailsheimer (Baltimore: Penguin Books 1966).
Ricoeur, Paul, The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1974).
Solomon, R.C., ed., Phenomenology and Existentialism (New York: Harper and Row 1972).
Zizioulas, John D., Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1985).
Notes:
1 Stanley S. Harakas, Toward Transfigured Life: The Theoria of Eastern Orthodox Ethics (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Company 1983), p. 63.
2 Paul Ricoeur, "Religion, Atheism, and Faith," tr. C. Freilich, in The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1974), pp. 440-467.
3 John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, second edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1977), p. 59.
4 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1985), p. 46.
5 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, third edition (Boston: Beacon Press 2001), p. 334.
6 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragments 199-201, tr. A.J. Krailsheimer (Baltimore: Penguin Books 1966), pp. 88-95.
7 While it is true that no atheist Existentialist would use the language of good and evil, a certain subtle dualism creeps in the backdoor, as it were. As Harakas has pointed out, there is a tendency among Existentialist thinkers - Sartre is a prime example - to align themselves with "movements" or "causes" - a fact that implies, rather contradictorily, a recognition of certain basic standards for existence over against others (Harakas, Toward Transfigured Life, p. 63). Sartre, as we know, aligned himself with the communist party, which required him to adopt an attitude antithetical to democracy.
8 Origen of Alexandria recognized this existential demand and, utilizing Platonic philosophy, explained the role of humanity in the world in universalist terms - i.e., the human being, for Origen, was not understood as the result of a prior, transcendent action, but as an always new locus of possibility. When Origen speaks of multiple ages and universal restoration, his intention is not to undermine the Christian dogma of God’s active grace among humanity, or to deny the reality of the Fall; - rather, his intention is to demonstrate the existential implications of the Fall of Humanity: the Fall is not a prehistorical event recalled, but a condition that is played out always already in the life of the self-reflective human being.
9 When we yearn for some prior state of the soul or creation as that which was ideal, compared unfavorably with our present state of being, we are ignoring the foresight (prognôsis) and providence (pronoia) of God, who is responsive to all conditions, and speaks to all conditions, as Origen has explained in his De Oratione. Embracing temporal existence as the locus of our ownmost possiblity is the only and best response of the soul to its arena.
10 I could have given more extreme examples, such as the drug or sex addict, the alchoholic etc., but I feel it is useful to show how the dangers of the biological hypostasis affect even those whom we might consider to be living a ‘Christian’ life. It is worth pointing out here that Christians who have an excessive number of children, live in an unreasonably large home, and live a lifestyle that is destructive to the environment and negatively impacts the quality of life of others, through overpopulation, pollution, etc., do not bear witness to the message of Jesus Christ.
11 Lk 14:26 RSV.
12 Phil 2:12 RSV.
13 Rudolph Bultmann, "The Historicity of Man and Faith," in S.M. Ogden, tr., Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann (Cleveland: World Publishing Company 1960), pp. 92-110, esp. note 10, p. 96.
14 Harakas, Toward Transfigured Life, p. 64.
15 Indeed, we know that the unofficial motto of Existentialism is "existence precedes essence."
16 As an unabashed Origenist, I firmly believe in apokatastasis. Anyone shocked by this statement is referred to my articles on that great theologian, where my position is carefully explained and firmly defended within the context of Orthodox belief.
17 Jn 1:1-3.
18 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 74, and note 22; see also Justin Martyr, Apologia 44.9.1-44.10.3 (Goodspeed).
19 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 53-65.
20 Ibid., p. 57.
21 See Maximus Confessor, Ambiguum 10, 1189B-C.
22 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Ballantine Books 1965), p. 93.
23 Harakas, Toward Transfigured Life, p. 75.
24 Ibid., p. 84.
25 It is interesting that Harakas used a human child for an example, and not an animal. This displays, I believe, the prejudicial concern for human existents over others, a severe problem in Orthodoxy, and one which I hope to address in the near future.
26 Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," in S. Hand, ed., The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1989), p. 82.
|
