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The oral Life

Skills fo r Mo ral Living

Having sketched the horizon within'which, today, a moral existence must be defined, and moral argumentation conducted, we shall now turn to the question as to what constitutes the moral life itself. What expectations are aroused by this question, and what guidance on moral living can be expected from a written text? In a previous chapter I wrote that, for the individual, a question should be regarded as moral if it decides what kind of a person he or she is. Moral questions are those through which matters become serious for the individual. Now, one will not expect to come upon this seriousness while reading a text, and still less will a text decide what kind of person the reader is. The most that can be indicated in a book is the dimensions by which a moral existence can be defined for the individual today, against the background of our history and the current situation of human beings. The medium of written communication cannot enable us to anticipate when matters will become serious for an individual, and, in particular, they cannot equip the individual human being with the aptitudes needed to confront that seriousness. If such aptitudes for moral living are to be acquired, a text can, at most, indicate types of practices through which one can hope to acquire them. In my attempt to meet these expectations, this section of the chapter will sketch only the initial leap which must be taken when embarking on a moral life, while the next will deal with the question of what it means, under given conditions, to be human well; the third, finally, will set out in more detail what is involved when matters become serious for someone.

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First of all, however, I shall sum up what has already been said, to make clear the basis from which the initial leap must be made, and the obstacles a moral existence must overcome.

The description of the situation of the modern human being, our own situation, turned out to be somewhat sceptical from the moral point of view. More precisely, it emerged that morality is superfluous in the average life situation. Everyday behaviour is sufficiently regulated by customary practices, and as these prac­ tices are group- and system-specific, they extend into every corner of existence. The fields of public action are differentiated into instrumental subsystems, so that the system-imperatives of these subsystems are sufficient as guidelines for actions, right down to the actions of individual firms and authorities. Actions are organ­ ized instrumentally in terms of system goals, and the means adopted to attain them require, above all, behaviour conforming to the system. What is left over - the sphere of personal biography and private existence - is largely taken over from individuals by experts. The individuals' relationship to them, whether it is one of trust or of dependence, relieves them of the necessity of construct­ ing a way of life of their own. And as for the other pole, the great whole, society and the state, it is shaped by liberal principles and does not call for any commitment from the individual. The inter­ play of the interests pursued by individuals and groups - so the basic liberal assumption runs - will doubtless work out for the common good (with a little guidance if necessary). Morality is not required.

And yet, as we have seen, moral questions do exist. There are biographical constellations, there are developments and situations, which decide what kind of people we are. How are we to recognize them, and how must we be prepared to meet them? In addition, historical experience teaches us that one can find oneself in situ­ ations in which, by following customary practices, by remaining discreet and performing the required services on the basis of one's functional competence, one can incur guilt. How must we forearm ourselves to be able to break out of such situations, should it be necessary? In these questions there is no help from outside. Look­ ing ahead, we can assume neither that the whole will be good, nor that virtue will be successful. Our moral confidence in the world has been profoundly shaken by the experiences of the last century.

All this means that morality today begins with scepticism. In a state of civilization in which both the individual and society are largely relieved of the burden of moral questions, but in which the questions as to what the individual is as a human being, and what

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the society is as a society, are nevertheless posed, moral existence must see itself as a springing away from what already exists, a new departure. The desire for a moral life is linked, strange as that may sound, with the Greek idea of arete, according to which virtue means: to be better. Today, too, a moral life requires that one be different, better than the many, that one break away from what merely happens. Morality begins with resistance.1

Selfhood

The break-out into a moral life is, first of all, a journey into selfhood. Ernst Tugendhat, who rightly observes that there are not only reasons but also motives for a moral life, sums up these motives as an initial decision to be a good human being. But that says both too much and too little. It says too much because the only certain thing in a break-out is what one is leaving behind, not any possible goal of virtue. And it says too little in that Tugendhat defines the good human being as a co-operative partner.2 But one is already a co-operative partner by virtue of adhering to customary practices, and conforming functionally to systems. All that is not the goal of morality but its precondition, and it can also be assumed to apply to any average modern person. Undoubtedly, these premises are not innate but are acquired, both by the individual and by the European human being in general, through hard training and profound socialization. But morality only begins when one is able to break through customary behaviour, and that requires practice.

To illustrate this I shall give two surprising and, from the point of view of cultural history, revealing examples. One comes from the book by Ruth Kluger already mentioned, Weiter leben. Eine Jugend. As a twelve-year-old girl Ruth Kluger was imprisoned in a concentration camp. When a selection was made in the women's camp to segregate women between the ages of fifteen and forty­ five for a labour camp - and labour meant, at least, continuing to live - the girl had difficulty in giving an age other than her true one. When she had already been rejected, which would have meant her certain death, her mother begged her to try again with another SS selection officer, giving an incorrect age. She then resolved to claim that she was already thirteen! Only when a female guard assisting the SS man whispered to her that she should say she was fifteen did she actually do SO.3

The second example is from Mark Twain's famous novel Huckle-

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berry Finn. Huck, the son of an asocial drinker, teams up with the escaped Negro slave Jim, and they both want to reach a state in which slavery has already been abolished. However, Huck, who by now has formed a deep friendship with Jim, has extreme pangs of conscience because he is about to help a slave gain freedom. Although he is himself anything but a respectable citizen, he still regards it as nothing less than a sin to do such a thing.4

In both these episodes, truly serious situations are involved, and moral questions are at stake. From them it can be seen that the ability to transgress prohibitions is one of the aptitudes constitut­ ing a moral life. As we know, Georges Bataille declared the transgression of prohibitions to be a sign of the sovereignty of a human being.s But that is not what is meant here - or at least, not quite what is meant. For what matters in a moral life is not the pleasure in freedom which Bataille associates with the transgres­ sion of prohibitions. In a moral life such transgressions can only occur in isolated cases, whereas the ability to transgress prohibi­ tions is essential to a moral existence. To illustrate this by a relatively innocuous example: it is not especially moral to abstain from stealing if one does not dare to do so. And what is commonly meant by not daring does not need to be a fear of sanctions, but can simply be an inability to deviate from average social expecta­ tions, that is, from customary behaviour. The customary practice of not stealing can very well be adopted as part of a moral life - I am someone who does not steal - but to do so one must first have acquired the certainty that one could steal. It can be seen that to enter on a moral life does not everywhere and universally mean to violate customary behaviour, but that the transgression of certain prohibitions is necessary - for practice, as it were, or as a kind of paradigm - in order to embark on a moral life. On one hand, such paradigmatic transgressions enable one to adopt the prohibitions positively, and, on the other, they generate the confidence that, when matters become serious, one will be able to deviate from customary practice.

This act of 'making up leeway', as Heidegger called it,6 cannot be achieved in a purely intellectual way. It is a practical act, and through it selfhood is founded. However, the moral life does not refer merely to aptitudes and single acts, but to a whole way of life. The retrospective appropriation will be more serious, and may not be achievable at all without some major biographical change of direction. Anyone who becomes aware of the possibility of a moral existence, whose eyes are opened, so to speak, finds them­ selves to be someone who, in a fundamental sense, has not

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previously been themselves at all. It seems to them that, biograph­ ically, everything just happened that way. They were born in a certain parental home, attended a certain school, showed themselves to have certain gifts, and it then was customary for them to embark on this or that professional career; finally, they happened to meet and live with this or that person - everything just turned out that way. Now one cannot, of course, be 'the basis for oneself', as Heidegger puts it? and, biographically, one appears to oneself as having in some way emerged from a mist. But, to achieve selfhood, it clearly is not enough simply to decide to be what one is, or has become, in any case; without a No, without a major turning-point in one's biography, selfhood cannot be attained.

Such biographical breaks are also associated with losses, and it is by no means guaranteed that after them one's life will be better. But, with regard to a moral life, it is in any case preferable to lead a life for which one is oneself to blame, than to spend it claiming that 'things just turned out like that'. There is, admittedly, a danger that - just because of the losses, and especially the loss of esteem in the eyes of others whom one has disappointed - one may experience the biographical break as itself something which just happened. It is all too easy to give up one's selfhood after a break or decision which has not turned out well; all too easily a bad conscience can lead one to be reclaimed by 'the others'. It can be seen that to lead a moral life and to be happy are not the same thing. More precisely, selfhood begins at the point where one can integrate negativity.

Negativity can even play an important part in a moral life, at least at the time of the turning-point. Simply by rejecting possi­ bilities of happiness, whether they concern success, money or certain forms of recognition, one gains a consciousness of being oneself. For in a straightforwardly 'successful life'S one will never know whether one has not been merely pushed along, or has been favoured by fortune. One would not know whether this life was actually one's own. Now, I certainly do not wish to offer a primer in the 'pursuit of unhappiness? but I do wish to help one to gain the courage to cope with unhappiness. A moral life does not need to be unhappy, but negativity is a part of it and gives it a certain contour. It is by the ability to integrate negativity into one's life that selfhood is decided.

As life in its positivity is always already in progress, the beginning of selfhood is a No, a resistance to the customary and a departure from what happens of its own accord. The ability to say 'No' is thus a basic virtue, or the initial skill called for by a moral

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life. But to say 'No' is not a single act performed once and for all; it can only be a paradigmatic act which sparks the awareness of being able to be oneself. The ability to say 'No' will be needed again and again in subsequent life, and each time it will bring with it special risks. I shall take as an example the possibility of saying 'No' to offers of therapy. The exposure to dependence on experts, precisely when matters become serious, is especially great in the medical field. The knowledge of the average citizen in matters of sickness and health today is minimal, or is made diffuse and confused by the reading of newspapers. The more one knows in this area 'as a lay person', the more unsure one feels. For this knowledge is alien to us, and merely refers us to the one who really knows, the doctor. The authority assumed by the latter is exerted systematically by the medical profession. It forms part of their professional expertise. But the lay person cannot see, and does not want to see, how flawed this knowledge is; they cannot assess the uncertainties of medical knowledge or the risks of treatment, nor do they want to. They are therefore handed over unconditionally to the treatments proposed by doctors. To say 'No' here, or even to resist by asking questions, by demanding expla­ nations, costs a great deal. Above all, it means taking upon oneself the risk associated with the further course of the illness. The paradox is that one has to bear this risk in any case, but would rather pass on the responsibility to others, at the price of one's selfhood. For the ability to say 'No' is precisely what is at stake here, and with it the appropriation of one's own life. Moreover, it will be hard to stand by the choice if the decision turns out to be wrong.

We touch here on the problem of remorse. Just as one does not wish to take failure of the treatment upon oneself, one is also inclined to detach oneself from those decisions and acts which have been proved wrong by their consequences, or have met with opposition from others. This causes a split within selfhood. One cannot stand by one's own deeds, and becomes divided from oneself. There are people who think they recognize the morality of a person precisely in their remorse and bad conscience. But these are merely signs that the others have caught up with the one who has broken away, and have made him once more compliant to the customary and the expected. Remorse is not a sign of a moral life, but a symptom of its collapse. Anyone who is a self does not know remorse, since nothing happens to him which he has not wanted; he is the author of his acts. Of course, he can make mistakes, and actions can entail consequences which he has not foreseen. But

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that is not a reason to distance oneself from one's actions; rather, selfhood requires that one endure even guilt, and bear even the unintended consequences of one's actions. And anyone who acts must reckon with the fact that he will do wrong to others. They will call upon him to repent his actions. But, in the end, what use is that to them, or, conversely: what does one gain by forcing another to apologize? A small triumph, a humiliation, a denial of that person's self. Why not maintain respect and acknowledge that he had reasons for his actions?

Unhappiness and remorse are the snares which constantly threaten to drag one away from the path of selfhood. But if we have said that it is precisely the ability to integrate unhappiness into one's own life which constitutes a moral existence, then that also applies to mistakes. It is by the faults in the coat we wear that we recognize it as our own.

The ability to act

It is said that action is the true domain of ethics. Ethics is concerned with acting well. But what actually is action? And does everyone act? To act is distinguished from to let things happen, or to get something over and done with. If someone says he or she is acting, it has a strong sense, something is emphasized. Kant associated the concept of action with freedom. To act was to be the initiator of a causal chain; it connoted spontaneity. But does any such thing really exist? Normally, at any rate, we do not act. Life happens, and we get this or that done, meet expectations, fulfil requirements to perform. We are driven by our fears and hopes - perhaps, too, by our ambition and desire to count for something. But none of that can be called action.

Plato admirably clarified the relevant difference in his dialogue Hippias Minor. He states it in terms of voluntariness and involuntari­ ness. Socrates's argument with the Sophist Hippias turns on the question as to who was the better man, Achilles or Odysseus. When Hippias tries to assert that Achilles was better because he was more truthful - whereas Odysseus was scheming and duplic­ itous - Socrates points out that on occasion Achilles, too, told lies. Hippias defends him by showing that the alleged lies were only utterances made under the influence of affect. But in saying this he fell into Socrates's trap. For Socrates now proves that the better man is the one who lies intentionally, since only he sees clearly the

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difference between truth and falsehood, and thereby controls it. Thus, in mathematics, the better calculator is the one who can deliberately make mistakes, whereas mistakes merely happen to the weaker one. In arguing this Socrates also expresses the ambiva­ lence of voluntariness, and no doubt many of his listeners at that time, and many readers of Plato now, will side with Achilles and prefer the naive, well-intentioned man to the shrewd intriguer.lO But one thing is clear: action implies voluntariness, and voluntari­ ness is a state in which one is not just carried along, or in which something merely happens to one; it implies that one is at a certain distance to all that. This is not to say that the state of voluntariness actually defines the moral life; but it does make a start to that life, provides a precondition for it. And here, too, it must be said that this state does not come upon one willy-nilly; it needs to be tried out and practised.

What does it mean to be able to act without being pushed along? Does it mean, for example, to act without a motive - that is, from mere caprice? But what does caprice mean? It is clear that we are touching here on the problem of freedom, as it has been discussed again and again in ethics. In Kant, freedom is a kind of primordial causality, a non-empirical origin of action. That is only conceivable if, like Kant, one distinguishes between a mundus intelligibilis and a mundus sensibilis, and assumes that the subject of action belongs to the non-empirical world. But even Kant, who had this schema at his disposal, had to specify a motive for moral action, a 'main­ spring' (Triebfeder) as he revealingly called it. He found it in respect for the law. But this takes him outside his transcendental theory of freedom and back into psychology. We, too, want to place the question about the ability to act on the empirical plane, though not in the sense that it implies observable behaviour - such proof would, strictly speaking, be morally irrelevant. The ability to act is empirical in the sense that it is a skill which can be practised.

The ability to act authentically should be understood as the possibility of doing something purely on the basis of reflection. This is the type of action which Socrates distinguished by the criterion of voluntariness. The question he put to the Sophist Protagoras in the dialogue of that name is characteristic in this respect: 'Do you hold knowledge to be a ruling element?' His question aims to establish whether reflection can become an agency guiding and initiating action. Protagoras counters this by citing the opinion of the many, based on their experience that they are overcome by their desires, or, expressed more generally, that their actions are motivated by something which drives or draws them

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on, by affects.u Accordingly, authentic action is said to be some­ thing initiated and guided in an affect-free, or at any rate an affect­ independent, manner.

Now, I maintained in a previous chapter that the average working, transport-using member of technical civilization today is capable of precisely that type of action, that is to say, of cool, objectively appropriate behaviour. Admittedly, in this formulation the point at issue is somewhat weakened, since I refer to it as behaviour, not action. In the end, it is for self-examination to decide whether the kind of skill one has acquired in being able to control a technical device properly even when under affective stress, or in treating oneself as a thing when giving oneself an injection - whether this skill is sufficient to be regarded as a basic aptitude of moral life. I have already pointed out that the achievements of objectivity and affect-independent behaviour are not as a rule the outcome of self-mastery and moral decision, but of a kind of split. If that is indeed the case, then, for the sake of practice, one ought to seek out certain situations in which action based on reflection is sure to meet with affective resistance. I shall mention a few situations of this kind which are trivial in nature, but which by degrees become serious. To take one example, one should try walking calmly into a cold lake, without hesitating at any point. Of course, one can do it! One simply has to do it. The crucial point is that one does not have the self-awareness which is a prerequisite for moral action if one has not, at some point in one's life, had the experience that one simply had to do something, and then actually did it.

I shall mention another typical situation, which may be charac­ teristic of the context in which these reflections on ethics first came into being and were presented in the form of lectures: the fear of examinations. Fear of examinations is a state of unfreedom in which one does not even have access to one's normal stock of knowledge. What is the nature of this fear, and how is it to be combated? It results partly from a feeling of dependence, of exposure, and partly from the pressure to produce a maximum of performance at a single given moment. It is entirely possible to master this situation if one has once deliberately removed oneself from it. My recommendation is that, for once, one should deliber­ ately make mistakes. In this way one overcomes both the feeling of not being in control of the situation and the usual inner urge to achieve one's maximum performance. One recaptures the situation as one's own; from being driven by events one again becomes the author of one's actions. The paradox is that by once having decided

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to be worse than one could be, in the long run one is likely to be better than one would otherwise have been.

I shall mention a third situation. It has to do with overcoming embarrassment. The feeling of embarrassment is, of course, a feeling of dependence on the opinions of others . One fails to do a great many things in life, and, in particular, one fails to re-examine a great many things in life, because it would be embarrassing - for example, admitting a mistake, or phoning someone back, or going back because one has forgotten something. By this example of overcoming embarrassment one can see perhaps most clearly that the coolness which everyone is able to show today is not quite the same thing as moral aptitude. We have to do here with a kind of intra-ethical debate or struggle. Embarrassment is a form of shame, and shame - if I may put it thus - is an elementary ethical feeling. Practice in dealing with embarrassing situations is therefore, to an especially high degree, a preliminary exercise for a moral life. For what is at stake is the ability to break through customary behav­ iour when matters become serious.

Moral existence begins with the ability to act independently of demands (Zumutungen) and temptations (Anmutungen). In the tra­ ditional debate on freedom more attention has been given to temptations, in the form of drives and affects. Today, when the drives are muted in any case, it is demands which are more relevant. These are the average expectations which control behav­ iour. A basic principle of these expectations is that one should be like everyone else, that is, one should not be conspicuous. Against this background, one of the basic qualifications for moral behav­ iour is rightly referred to as 'civil courage'. This term denotes courage in civilian life as against courage in war. The remarkable thing is that this peacetime courage is often more difficult than courage in war. For in war - as traditionally understood - every­ one charges together, whereas civil courage generally calls for behaviour which is difficult just because it deviates from that of everyone else. In former times civil courage had something of angry defiance about it, since it usually had to be shown not towards the majority but towards a superior, as courage before princely thrones. Today, the dominant authority one has to deal with is not, as a rule, an individual, but simply the majority. To assert oneself against it is especially difficult because one has oneself internalized that authority. One has rehearsed majority behaviour as one's own average behaviour.

In the history of the German Federal Republic there have been ample opportunities to practise civil courage. These were good

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occasions for practice because one was not on one's own, but could act jointly with others of like mind - even if against the majority and the organs of state. I am thinking of the anti-nuclear power movement, the opposition to the Frankfurt west runway, move­ ments against the prohibition to practise one's profession, against the census, against rearmament, against nuclear waste transporta­ tion, and so on. These were undoubtedly acts of civil courage, since they often involved the overcoming of inner inhibitions, and because each individual had to decide for himself whether to take part, and, finally, had to take responsibility on his own. This resistance movement, which has been on the alert throughout almost the whole history of the Federal Republic, and is constantly revitalized by new controversies, has enabled millions of people in our country to practise civil courage and civil disobedience, and thereby to gain an awareness of the moral life. Just as at one time, when the nation was authoritarian and militaristic, it was possible to regard the army as the school of the nation, in the history of the Federal Republic it is the resistance movement which is to be considered as the school of the nation, since the Federal Republic is a democratic form of state. By occasionally and conditionally calling back sovereignty from the state, young people, in particu­ lar, have developed into conscious citizens. Through its wide repercussions, this form of rehearsing a moral life also became a contribution to the self-understanding of the society in which we live.

To mention one last example of the rehearsal of the ability to act, I would recall an idea I introduced as a joke in an earlier section - the idea that an official in a bureaucratic agency might get the idea of being brave. Against the background of the discus­ sion of civil courage, this somewhat absurd example becomes more plausible. For civil courage involves the application in the civil sphere of a virtue which was actually developed in the military sphere, namely courage or bravery. In general, what is at stake in these examples is the possibility that moral ideas can be applied at all in the average civilized life - the life smoothed out by the imperative to perform, by conformity to the system, by security. The outcome of our presentation of technical civilization has been that, in the normal life of work and travel, morality is superfluous. That does not mean, however, that one should let matters rest there, that one should put up with this situation. Rather, it is worthwhile - just for the sake of practice - to take these everyday situations seriously. That is achieved, as a rule, by using the lever of traditional moral ideas, especially the classical

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virtues of bravery, magnanimity and honesty, or by seeing such everyday situations in terms of more universal principles, such as fundamental rights or human rights. By taking matters seriously on occasions, for example by demanding rights of participation or insisting on equality, by rejecting lies or deceptions imposed by expediency or by introducing a perspective of public welfare or the reproduction of nature into economic life, one will trigger the most amazing responses. The least vehement reaction of one's environment will be the accusation of naivety. This implies that anyone who adopts a moral standpoint is behaving in an ingenu­ ous, childish manner and is still ignorant of the ways of the world. In particular, it will be pointed out that his ideas are unrealizable and without practical consequences. Further accusations in this connection are of utopianism and idealism. Both of these imply, again, that a moral life entails an unrealistic attitude to the world. Furthermore, the introduction of a moral standpoint is felt to be embarrassing, a faux pas. It can be seen here that the world of customary behaviour protects itself even on the meta-ethical level: it is customary to adhere to customary behaviour. But one will also have a quite different experience - earning applause, finding coalition partners and even, sporadically, realizing that things can actually be changed. The decisive thing, however, is that by occasionally taking everyday situations seriously one gains experi­ ence of what can happen when matters really do become serious. And in any case, our normal everyday life is itself a serious matter, in that it decides, in the long term, what kind of people we are and in what kind of society we live. And so it is worthwhile to take this life seriously from time to time.

Participation

With this idea of periodically taking seriously the kind of society we live in we have reached - perhaps too early - a central and, for the ethics being presented here, crucial point, namely the connec­ tion between moral existence and moral argumentation. By occasionally taking seriously, in our lived situation, the question of the kind of society we live in, we commit ourselves to that question in a way which is no longer purely argumentative. I have pointed out that the basic outlook of our society is a liberal one. This implies, in particular, the belief that the pursuit of individual interests has a beneficial effect on public welfare. It also means

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that while everyone has rights of participation, not everyone needs to exercise them, and that an individual's choice of a mode of life, including the nature of his private existence, his thoughts, feelings and religious conviction, is irrelevant to the structure of the whole. But it also means, conversely, that the social regulations which one considers necessary and which, on occasion, one may support by moral argumentation, need not have anything to do with one's own moral life.

I should like now to state as a core element of a moral life that one does not accept this dichotomy. It is practically a defining characteristic of living within the customanj to make generous use of one's liberal rights without concerning oneself about protecting them or developing them further. It is a characteristic possibility of our form of society that the project of one's own life can be confined to the shaping of the private sphere, and that one's relationship to public life and politics can be restricted to paying taxes and occasionally voting. It is characteristic of our constitution that it defines the state in contradistinction to social life, and that the social existence of the individual is therefore possible without any political commitment. That this has not always been so, and must not necessarily be so, can be seen, for example, from the primal text on the theme of caring for oneself - Plato's dialogue Alcibiades 1. In it the concern for oneself, the rehearsing of selfhood, the formation and development of the soul, which Socrates pro­ poses to the young Alcibiades, is equated with his development as a politician, a polites, that is, a publicly effective citizen. For us, that equation is by no means self-evident; rather, becoming politicized, or politically committed, is a special sign of a moral existence. That is also seen, conversely, in the fact that, for us, being a politician can be a normal, modern professional activity - that is, it can be conformist, performance-oriented and respectable within the framework of the customary, and without any special political commitment.

In order to fill the moral life with content, it is necessary to establish a relationship between one's own project of a moral life and what is held to be right in argumentation and discourses aimed at establishing a social consensus. For the structure of a moral life which has been developed in this chapter up to now - under the headings of selfhood and the ability to act - has remained a formal possibility which has been characterized, in particular, by negative capabilities: distance, resistance, voluntari­ ness. The problem contained in this was already formulated clearly by Socrates. To return once more to his thesis in the Hippias Minor:

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if the better mathematician is the one who can deliberately make mistakes, and the better man is the one who does not say untruths by accident or under the influence of affect, but lies because he knows the truth and the difference between true and false - if that is so, why then does this better man do the good and not the bad? Socrates's lapidary answer to this problem is the thesis that 'No one voluntarily does the bad', because he naturally does not want to harm himself. This Socratic solution to the problem clearly rests on a basic trust in the moral world order - a trust we no longer share. We therefore have to look for another solution. This other solution consists in taking seriously our rights of participation, that is, understanding the possibilities of political commitment as those which also decide what kind of a human being one is. For by taking rights of participation seriously one relates oneself to con­ crete moral ideas, those which we have referred to generally as themes or topoi of moral discourse. This relationship can consist in attempting to realize these basic moral ideas in one's own life project. But - and this must be stressed - it can also be a negative relationship; that is, it can consist in a commitment to change these basic moral ideas themselves. Moral discourses, as we have noted, are not concerned merely with defining new social regulations on the basis of fixed themes, but also with problematizing these basic moral ideas in the light of new problems and new political and cultural developments, and with working towards the establish­ ment of new basic ideas and customary practices. Here, the practis­ ing of alternative modes of life can go hand in hand with a political commitment which aims at changing what is socially customary, even to the point of changing fundamental rights or individual laws. In the history of the Federal Republic up to now this connection between moral and political commitment and alterna­ tive modes of life can actually be observed in many instances. It can therefore be said that the alternative solution - alternative in relation to a state of civilization in which one believed one could rely on the moral world order - consists in exerting oneself, through the project of one's own mode of life, on behalf of the moral world order. By world order, however, I refer only to the limited horizon of the basic moral consensus which constitutes our social conception of ourselves.

This politicization of one's own life-project is also necessary for another reason. I have emphasized at various points that the project of a moral life - in deviating from customary behaviour, for example, or in the idea of the patient who has ' come of age' - carries heavy risks. As a rule, one will be unable to bear these risks

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in isolation. That is to say that even if one wanted to bear them alone, one would nevertheless, through the consequences of one's actions, implicate the people close to one, family, friends and sometimes society in a wider sense. A characteristic example of this is a mode of life in which one does not seek by every means, i.e. from prenatal gene analysis to preventive abortion, to avoid disability. One can really only sustain such a life-project if one is supported in some way by one's immediate environment. It fol­ lows from this in principle that one cannot restrict the project of one's own moral existence to one's own person, but must extend it, through establishing a moral consensus with others - that is, through the formation of social groups - to encompass society as a whole.

By taking rights of participation seriously, however, one will relate concretely not only to the basic moral ideas of the society in which we live, but also to the state of civilization which constitutes the present conditions of being human, and to the historical background of the society in which we live. The project of being­ human-well is accomplished against the foil of the universal con­ ditions of life - that will be the subject of the next section. And when matters become serious our own conception of ourselves will not be a conception of human existence in general, but of a particular historical situation. Our own historical location is defined by our participation in a community of contemporaries. To take our own existence seriously, that is, to live it as a moral existence, means to relate oneself to the concrete here-and-now. Which problems one has to reckon with in one's own life, which possibilities one must prepare oneself for and in which political­ historical context one must see present-day events - all this de­ cisively influences the development of one's own moral skills. In this way one is necessarily related to the historical background which one shares with one's contemporaries.

Being-human-well

Ethics is concerned with the good. But what is the good? Plato and Aristotle defined it more precisely as the human good, to anthropi­ non agathon. We say that ethics is concerned with being-human-well. The use of the adverb implies that this formulation does not refer to an attribute of the human being, but to a quality of being human.

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What is at issue, therefore, is not certain attributes which qualify one as good, attributes which were traditionally called virtues, but an accomplishment, the accomplishment of being human. This implies that one can be what one is in any case, namely a human being, in different ways, and in particular, more or less well. Here, too, the Greek conception that to be good means to be better can be discerned. Being-human-well sets one off from the mode of life of the many. It will emerge, however, that the attempt to be human well is not really a striving to achieve a goal, but rather an endeavour to engage fully in being human and to disown nothing which forms part of it. It has to do with the moderation which at the same time is a proud renunciation of anything over-exalted, which Camus advocates at the end of The Rebel: a moderation which has learned how to live and die and, in order to be human, refuses to be God.12

To engage fully with being human, to disown nothing which forms part of it, seems to be in contradiction to what we have sketched under the heading of the moral life. Were not precisely the ability to act and to resist characteristic of the moral life, and did we not thus follow the traditional concept of ethics, according to which will and freedom are the chief attributes of a moral life? To be sure - but the rehearsing of selfhood and the ability to act related only to the formal preconditions of a moral life, the content of which remains to be decided. A first step in this was taken in the section on participation. Here, too, we were concerned with commitment, that is, with taking seriously in one's own life the specific ideas one upholds as a participant in moral discourse. To be human well is not the antithesis of the project of a moral life; this project is its actual content. The reason why selfhood, detach­ ment, resistance and the ability to act are prerequisites for being­ human-well lies in the peculiarities of our state of civilization, in which we are continually denied the ability to be human, which is overlaid and concealed by technology and administration and repudiated by hybrid projects. Conversely, however, the possibility of saying 'No', of not putting up with what is given, of resistance, is an essential part of being human. It is just that, in our historical situation, this refusal to resign oneself is directed less against nature than against the second nature or, as Gottfried Benn for­ mulated it, against the 'state-controlled extermination of all essence'.13

For this reason this section, unlike the previous one in which the moments of action and decision were predominant, will be concerned rather with nature - the nature we ourselves are - and

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with what it means to engage ourselves with the given, and to let something happen to us.

A human essence?

It might seem that, in order to discuss being-human-well, we need to know what it means to be human. Is there an essence of the human being, that can be fulfilled more or less well? If being­ human-well were determined by such a human essence, then it would again become a project. One would have in view an ideal state of human being towards which one had to strive. It is true that, historically, humanity's conception of itself has almost always been formulated in terms of such ideals. Ideal human being was posited as reason, for example, or freedom, as a state to be reached, or realized through emancipation. Such definitions of essence as types of ideal human being are of great importance and have had a significant and dynamic influence on history through education and politics. And the desire for resistance and intensification inherent in them is undoubtedly an integral part of human exist­ ence. But in gazing towards those goals, humanity has overlooked and denied the human situation, which consists in seeking to transcend oneself towards ideals to which, for that very reason, one does not correspond. This starting-point from which one breaks away, the given being one finds oneself to be, nature - this, too, is a part of the human situation.

I shall elucidate this in relation to the traditional understanding of man as animal rationale, as a rational creature. According to the classical rules of definition which go back to Aristotle, a definition is formed by stating the genus proximum, the closest species to the one to which the entity to be defined belongs, and then the differentia specifica, by which it differs from the other species within that genus. In this case the closest species would be the living organism or animal, and the differentia specifica, the way in which man differs from all other organisms or animals, is identified as rationality. The actual essence, or proprium, of man thus lies in the differentia specifica. Man is man essentially through his rationality. It follows - and this is how the formula has been actually under­ stood, and has been implemented through education in a compre­ hensive strategy - that man is the more human the more he develops his rationality and overcomes the animality within him. That is only one example. There are other formulae for ideal

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humanity through which humanity has historically evolved its conception of itself by projecting itself in terms of a certain ideal form, a whatness. Accordingly, to be a good human being means to correspond as far as possible to the determinants of this ideal. In contrast to that, we are concerned, in our attempt at being­ human-well, to engage with the intermediate situation, the situation between nature and ideal, b etween facticity and project, and to subject ourselves in earnest to the implications of this situation. That does not mean denying the ideals, but it does generate an awareness of the losses and one-sidedness which are bound up with their pursuit, and of the price to be paid for its realization. And, in the late phase of modernity which we have characterized as technical civilization, it also compels us to come to terms with the given, to refuse to disown nature, and to be able to live with what we do not control. An average human existence in technical civilization is dominated by the ideal of security - an ideal which generates the illusion that illness has been abolished, which denies death, which estranges one from one's body and devalues corpo­ real existence. Since b eing-hum an-well is defined on the basis of the general conditions of the given historical situation - this is, in our case, of the state of civilization which has been described - being-human-well is concerned primarily today with the pathic, with letting something happen to us, with engaging with the given; it is concerned with integrating the nature which we our­ selves are into our practical conception of ourselves.

Being nature

That we live within nature, that we are living creatures, organisms, has been made emphatically clear by the problems which, in the widest sense, are called environmental problems. The fact that we cannot not be of this world, that we are in the world, that we must live within the circulation of elements, has been made directly perceptible to us . That does not mean, however, that we have already overcome the conception of ourselves which is articulated, for example, by the formula of the animal rationale, or that we have integrated our natural being explicitly into this conception of ourselves. On the contrary, nature, which we ourselves really are, remains external to us, an object of natural science, an organism subject to certain reciprocal influences and which we manipulate by means of technology and scientific medicine. Under these

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conditions, it becomes a specific ability, a skill, not just to have nature in some way, but to be nature. 'Bodily existence as a task'14 calls for a special kind of attentiveness, and has to be practised.

It must be stressed here once more that the decisive constituents of a moral life cannot be simply communicated in words, but have to be acquired through accomplishment and practice. A text can only point in certain directions and indicate a number of issues, fields or central agencies in relation to which the ability to 'be nature' can be developed. That we are nature is a fact. But the question is whether this fact remains external to us and merely happens to us. And bemg the nature we actually are will not be primarily a matter of intensifying our physical activities - in sport, for example - for by doing that we might simply make nature still more an object. Rather, it will be a matter of recognizing what happens to us as belonging to us. The first step, therefore, is to relativize our understanding of ourselves as '! ', or, as is sometimes said, to expand our consciousness. If, instead of this, I cling to the 'I' to which something happens, what happens to me remains external to me. Now, it would be absurd to say '! ' to this external thing, for, as long as I hold fast to my '! ', I could at most address this thing which happens to me as 'you'. Our relationship to our own bodies is an example of this. How difficult it is not merely to have this body but to be it, if one holds fast to the 'I'. There is no other way than, from time to time, to let go of this 'I' to some extent, or to engage in modes of being in which the 'I' disappears. The insights of psychoanalysis are undoubtedly helpful here, since they teach that the Ego is only an epiphenomenon, an agency mediating between the Id and reality, an agency acquired through painful socialization, and which can be put out of action in regressive states by fear, pain or sexual ecstasy, for example. Normally, however, the Ego is not merely a theoretical hypostati­ zation but a fixed agency determining our everyday behaviour: I sit, I telephone, I make an appointment, I write a text. But - as reflection can still tell me - I cannot think if no thoughts come into my mind, I cannot act if the nature we ourselves are, the body, does not play its part, and I shall not wish for anything if nothing affects my emotions or no desire arises within me. Practising begins when one consciously accepts this dependence on our own nature. However, this will certainly involve a relinquishing of our own self, or a weakening of ego-consciousness, or an expansion of awareness.

Characteristic of such practising is the exercise of letting ideas come into one's head. This means letting go of the linguistic and

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logical controls which the '1' normally exerts and which actually constitute the '! ', in favour of free association, openness, intuitive apprehension. The same applies to other areas, such as actions involving the body. It is well known that the '! ' is actually a hindrance to higher degrees of bodily performance. While alertness and consciousness are certainly highly important in gymnastics or dancing, they must not be ego-centred; what is required is a diffuse consciousness, an alertness of the body, and a very great confi­ dence that what one wants to happen will happen by itself. It is the same in the realm of wishing and desiring. Strictly speaking, one cannot want to desire. This explains the great difficulty many people have in knowing what they actually want, or more pre­ cisely, what they wish or desire; it explains the practical dilemma in which we want something and yet that thing means nothing to us, is without any attraction. In order to wish for something, therefore, it is necessary to relinquish the 'I' to some extent and to give ourselves up to uncertainty with regard to what can appeal to us and can cause desire to rise up in us.

I have indicated some ways in which our dependence on our own nature, and therefore our concomitant dependence on what is not '! ', can be integrated into the performance of life. When one refers, in other contexts, to the fact that man is nature like any other organism, one has in mind the fact that human life takes place between birth and death, that humans must eat and drink, and are exposed to illnesses. Philosophical anthropology, precisely to the extent that it is ethically relevant, has always sought to integrate death into self-consciousness. The reason, no doubt, is that death has been seen as the greatest moral challenge. However, attitudes towards death have been highly contradictory. For some, a moral attitude to death lay in the attempt to overcome it, so that mortal life was seen as a means of working towards immortality, as in Greek thinkers, for example. For others, it was more import­ ant to live one's own mortality as such - as Christian thinkers have done, up to the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Admittedly, this thinking was often bound up with the Christian hope for redemp­ tion from death. It is noteworthy that the same attention has not been paid to the fact of man's being born - probably because being born is regarded, as a rule, as an act completed with birth. In fact, however, the state of having been born has at least as much importance for human beings as death. And from an ethical standpoint the state of having been born is not exhausted by the fact that at a certain time one has seen the light of day. Rather, it has to do with the fact that one has received oneself, as it were, as

94 The Moral Life

emerging from mist or darkness, and that this being-given-to­ oneself can potentially extend throughout the whole of life. That this is so is shown, for example, by dreams, which constantly present us with new aspects of ourselves, and in which we can again and again appear as strange to ourselves. If, therefore, some philosophers, especially Kierkegaard and Heidegger, have called' for life to be lived as 'life-unto-death', one might reply that it is just as important to conceive of one's life as an everlasting birth. I could imagine that some artists live in this way. What is generally at issue here is to attach less importance to the 'e which is essentially an identity achieved through biography, in order to be able to surprise oneself, and, though seeing oneself as unfinished, to keep oneself open to possibilities of development.

The relationship to illness is of great importance for the moral life. Our technical civilization, especially in the context of technical­ scientific medicine, inclines us to see illness as a disorder in relation to normality, and to suppose that such disorders can in principle be remedied. A glance at the statistics, or at our circle of closest acquaintances, is enough to convince us that this conception of illness is an illusion. Only a small minority of illnesses are cured; most illnesses are of the kind one has to live with, and, once out of childhood and early youth, there is practically no one who does not have to live with some illness or other. If one has once come to terms with this fact, it emerges as a basic ethical problem how one is to live with illnesses. This does not mean that one should define oneself, or even develop an awareness of oneself, as a sick person. Protesting against the illness, and sometimes rising above it by ignoring it, can be adequate responses. It would not be adequate, however, to deny the illness or to define oneself out of it, for being-human-well also means living one's own fragility and weakness, as well as one's having been born and having to die. Here, nature means what in the Christian tradition was called the creatureliness of the human being.

Being-a-part

It is ethical reflection on the human situation of being-nature that first gives rise to doubts as to whether being-human-well is poss­ ible on one's own. If being-human-well means really engaging with the human situation, and fully living what it is to be a human being, it soon becomes clear that the humanity of the human being

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cannot b e fulfilled in isolation. The most striking example is sexuality. Because the human being, as an individual, only exists within the gender difference, whether this is understood as pri­ marily a natural or a social difference, he or she can only fulfil the task of being-human-well by understanding himself or herself as a related entity within a relation, or a pole within a polarity, or, more generally, as a part of a larger whole. That does not need to mean that the true human life must be conceived as a process of fusion or identification with another person. That could amount to appropriation, and violate the respect one owes to others in their otherness, and the need to preserve their individuality. But one certainly can live in such a way that one produces a larger whole jointly with the other, and is engaged affectively by this greater whole. At any rate, practising the ability to be a part is essential to being-human-well. It implies openness and attentiveness towards that which one is or can be with another, and it also means exposing oneself to the other and being affected by what affects him or her. Practising such an understanding of oneself, and the corresponding behaviour, is not easy. But there are opportunities for it in playful situations in which team-behaviour is called for. Such abilities are required, above all, when a human group without hierarchization is to be created, as in modern partnerships and families. For whenever a group is organized hierarchically, the whole is represented by one individual, the head of the family, at the expense of degrading the other members.

The ability to be a part is especially crucial in one's relationship to one's children. Here, it is all too easy to regard one's child as a part of oneself. This means, implicitly, that one is oneself the whole. In this way, the child's rights are not acknowledged, justice is not done to his or her autonomy or to the fascinating emergence of a new spontaneity in the child. It is noteworthy, and also in some way frightening, that Emmanuel Levinas - precisely the philoso­ pher of otherness - fails to understand the relationship to the child. He writes:

Filiality is still more mysterious: it is a relationship with the Other where the Other is radically other, and where nevertheless it is in some way me.1S

Similarly, he states earlier in the same interview (p. 66) that 'the subject'S ego is posited in its virility' and hence that 'the feminine is described as the of itself other'. It can be seen here how the metaphysical approach, with its insistence on the ego and identity,

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is unable to encompass being towards the other. The child does not experience itself as a part of its father or mother, but as a part of a 'We', and, in face of this, must laboriously bring into being its own 'I' by an effort of distancing. The parents, however, must, to an extent, abandon their fixation on their own 'I' in order to participate intuitively in the whole which they form with their child.

In sexuality, and in the parent-child relationship, one takes one's place in a complex which represents another important aspect of the being-nature of human beings, that is, the complex of generations. We have seen that even the Declaration of Human Rights postulates being born within and belonging to the 'family of man' as essential to being human. These two facts are not a programme for the individual human being, but are constitutive and given. By seeing oneself as a link in the chain of generations, and by consciously, through sexuality and the engendering of children, placing oneself within the sequence of generations, one accomplishes one's own being-human as a part of a larger whole. Karl Marx spoke in this context of the realization of our human 'species being',16

Finally, I would mention solidarity once more as a possible mode of being-a-part. I defined solidarity, incidentally, when I spoke of 'letting oneself be affected by what affects the other'. If one is a part of a larger whole, such as a family or a relationship between two partners, and in a wider sense if one is a member of an association, this solidarity comes into being practically by itself. All the same, tendencies of distancing will always manifest them­ selves: What has that to do with me? Here, the important thing is to practise equanimity, and to live the reality of being-a-part which is inherent in the cases mentioned - the family or partner relation­ ship . It is clear that this 'being affected by what affects the other' can have very far-reaching consequences. The illness of a child, completely changing one's daily routine or even calling for an entirely new life-plan, or a misfortune befalling an individual member of a small group, or, perhaps still worse, the guilt and failure of an individual member, can entail a major curtailment of life-prospects for an individual. It would be quite mistaken to define being-human-well at this point in terms of concepts such as responsibility, self-sacrifice or any such performance-related expressions. What is called for is nothing more than refusing to evade the issue, and being affected by what affects the other.

To the extent, however, that solidarity is defined as a form of the ability to be a part, this concept has not yet been revealed in

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its full scope. For we are still dealing here with the solidarity between people who b elong together. In the case of solidarity as love of one's neighbour, that cannot, in general, be presupposed. We shall have to come back to this.

Temptations and demands

It is also a part of being-human-well to put oneself in the way of temptations and demands. This observation may be somewhat surprising, since in the last section selfhood and the capacity to act were characterized precisely in terms of independence from temp­ tations and demands. The fact that human beings are exposed to these pressures makes up their natural and social being to an exceptional degree. They are, in this respect, vulnerable creatures, beings open to allurement and deception. To be sure, human beings are only themselves if they are able to assert themselves and to keep temptations and demands at a distance. But that is only a part of the truth. For anyone who is not touched by such pressures and does not have to meet social expectations has no cause to act. And anyone who developed selfhood and the ability to act solely on their own account would turn themselves into a kind of free-floating, extra-mundane being and in that way would forfeit their humanity.

I shall clarify this dialectic by an example. It is natural for a mother to be affected by compassion if her child falls ill. This is not just a case of caring for the child, but of being genuinely affected by what affects the other, of compassion. In going through what is happening to the child she is, in a sense, the best diagnos­ tician - because she does not merely register the child's suffering from outside - and she is, in principle, best able to say what would benefit the child. Her being affected by the child's suffering also makes her highly motivated to act, and this energy undoubtedly surpasses anything that would be mustered by an impartial observer. However, if her concern and fellow feeling grow too strong, she is, in a sense, herself ill, and can at most b e a communication partner and resonance-box for the child. To really help the child a certain distance and overview, and at least a degree of objectivity, are needed. That would save the mother from excessive haste and panic, and, above all, would enable her to consider alternative therapeutic measures.

We can see from this example that while b eing emotionally

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affected is certainly a prerequisite for action, action also requires us to free ourselves from this emotion in a certain way. True humanity, or, better, the accomplishment of being-human-well, lies midway between, or rather in a constant transition between, the two possibilities. The two conceivable poles of behaviour, on one side over-identification and on the other cool detachment, are both thoroughly human possibilities. But being-human-well consists in the movement between them. I say movement advisedly because there is, strictly, no intermediate state, no midway position between emotional involvement and detachment, but only a move­ ment between the two, a repeated crossing over by which one constantly engages emotionally with an event and then, in order to be able to act, detaches oneself from it.

Under the conditions of our advanced technical civilization it can no longer be taken for granted that one is emotionally affected by temptations and demands. There are various reasons for this. One has already been mentioned - the habituated coolness of behaviour and the displacement of emotional involvement to the realm of the fictive. Added to this is what - unhappily - is called the stimulus-overload coming from the media; in our context it would be better to speak of the over-supply and the contextless presentation of information and images which in other circum­ stances would be capable of claiming our human involvement. It is no wonder that a habitual blockade is set up against these solicitations. Finally, one should mention the rational organization of life itself, which seeks, in the name of the central value of safety, to make the individual wary of any excitement. Insurance policies are the best-known mechanisms of this biographical levelling. In most cases, of course, insurance is merely the stage-prop of an illusion. Health insurance, for example, plays on the illusion that one can insure oneself against illness. In fact, of course, it is the case that health insurance increases the risk of illness, in that it contributes to thoughtless living and a reduced sense of responsi­ bility towards one's health. In reality, therefore, health insurance does not insure one against sickness, but acts as a buffer against the event of illness; that is, by spreading the cost evenly over life it makes the event less striking and ensures that care is provided. Its effect, therefore, is that while illness is not prevented its biograph­ ical importance is reduced. As a further example I would mention legal protection insurance. It has in many respects a similar effect on biography to that of health insurance. But in this case the increase in risk and the reduction of personal responsibility take on proportions that must be described as immoral. Legal protec-

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tion insurance positively invites the holder to act irresponsibly - the experts will take care of the consequences - and, in particular, such a policy, by its nature, renders superfluous any attempt to resolve the case in question by human communication: the most trivial dispute between neighbours is passed to a lawyer.

To sum up: the conditions of technical civilization - that is, the normal behaviour of the transport-using, working person, the role of the media in our access to the world, the rational strategies and the preponderance of experts - buffer the susceptibility of the present-day human being, or even put him out of reach of temp­ tations and societal demands. The tedium and monotony of the average life are then compensated for affectively by living in fictive worlds.

Under these conditions, to be human well calls for an explicit art of exposing oneself to and engaging with temptations and demands. Here, more than at almost any other point, it becomes clear that the central theme of ethics today is not, or not only, action, but the development of pathic capabilities, of an art of becoming involved. To be affected, to be exposed to experience, no longer happens by itself. Here, too, practice is needed.

If I speak of practice, it is not only because certain skills are required simply in order to be emotionally affected today, to be carried along, to open oneself, to empathize, but also because any involvement must be selective. Strictly speaking, in this area practice can no longer be clearly distinguished from the situation when matters become serious. If one allows oneself to be affected by something, even if just for the sake of practice, that is already a serious matter. It raises the question of how one is to behave. And it is clear that one cannot allow oneself to be affected by everything, and that to open oneself totally would not be to be human well. No more, however, could one describe the present-day ataraxy, the imperviousness to affect and the state of being 'gloriously aloof', as being-hum an-well. One can only humanly survive the 'overload' of news and images on the wretchedness of the world if one allows oneself to be affected by at least something, and involves oneself at least somewhere. It cannot be denied that a part of being-human-well is to allow oneself to be affected by emotional temptations and demands.

1 00 The Moral Life

True (human) being. Dignity

The declarations of human rights and the German Basic Law attribute dignity to human beings as a part of their substance. But the safeguarded goods and the demand for social human rights show that there are preconditions for human dignity, and that it can be threatened. Moreover, as a theme of moral life, dignity is something which must have its reality, for each individual, in the way in which life is lived. One speaks, for example, of the importance of 'growing old with dignity'. Similarly, there are even institution­ alized efforts to make it possible to 'die with dignity'. Eye-witness accounts of resistance in the concentrations camps indicate that, for those involved, what mattered above all was to preserve the human face - even if that meant committing suicideP

These brief examples show very clearly the sense in which dignity is a characteristic of being-human-well. Human dignity consists, precisely, in enduring the relationship between involve­ ment and detachment, facticity and project, in refusing to deny the tension between them but, on the contrary, explicitly living that tension. Thus, to grow old with dignity means to accept ageing and one's own nature, and the facts bound up with the frailty of the body. On the other hand, however, it does not mean simply aban­ doning oneself to this process, 'letting oneself go', as it is called. Preserving the human face means not denying one's frailty and dependence, but it also means not shamelessly capitulating to them.

One might also call this self-respect, although it might be better to speak of a willingness to have a biography. For that, no doubt, is what was traditionally meant by a biography: the collecting of the events and experiences of life to form a history of the self, one's own history. The conditions of technical civilization no longer permit a biography in the average case.18 The reason is not only the flattening-out of biographical events already discussed, but also the fact that the average transport-using, working life is divided into sectors and no longer seeks to attain unity. To be human well means not accepting this situation, taking on oneself the effort of biography. To do this it is necessary to expose oneself to events but, on the other hand, not to lose oneself in them; it means preserving or, better, creating the unity of the person, through detachment and resistance, throughout the various cir­ cumstances of life, the different historical periods, and the func­ tional and utilitarian relationships in which one is involved.

The Moral Life I 0 I

Through the 'will to biography' one does justice to the tempo­ rality of human existence. That which makes up the human is 'by itself dispersed'.19 One can never at any single moment be wholly a human being; what makes up being human is possible only in succession, in life. But just because of this diffuseness we are constantly in danger of forfeiting our humanity. The will to biog­ raphy is therefore the will to preserve, or to create, the wholeness of the human being. But the temporality of human existence is not only of importance when life as a whole is at stake, but equally in the small events of life. Human beings are creatures of a single day, said the Greeks, ephemeroi, that is, they are at the mercy of the day or, as Bertolt Brecht expresses it: 'we are only tenants, provisional ones'. This trickling-away of time happens in fact, but we usually notice it only in retrospect. In face of this, to be human well would mean to enter into ephemeral existence itself, to lead one's life in the act of living, and to feel its transience. Under the given con­ ditions, that is possible, as a rule, only as an exercise, or, better, as a feast. For normally, i.e. as working, transport-using people, we are orientated towards goals, and what we do is unimportant as an act, compared to its result in terms of performance or value; or, in the case of transport, the journey and the time it lasts are of no consequence; what matters is the goaL and reaching it quickly. This destruction of life by function and result can only be countered by, occasionally, living ritually - that is, restoring the attentiveness, articulation and, above all, the time which are appropriate to the act of living itself. This will succeed best in festive contexts, or, conversely, if it succeeds, life will become a festival . In this way playfulness becomes a theme of ethics. But, at the same time, matters become serious. For on the question of whether one can lead this transient life serenely, or even, on occasion, festively, also depends what kind of human being one is.

Play and Seriousness

Play as an anthropological category

Play is an anthropological category - but to point that out is not enough. I would like to show that a closer consideration, in which play is set in relation to its counter-concept, seriousness, leads us into the field of morality.

I 02 The Moral Life

It was the cultural historian J ohan Huizinga who identified play as a central human attribute in his book Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play Element in Culture.20 He does not deny that animals also play; on the contrary, he regards this fact as important. But the human being goes on playing, prolongs the game, puts it on a permanent basis, and from this arises what distinguishes human beings as human: culture. That is Huizinga's version of the thesis that the humanity of human beings consists in turning a weakness of their nature into a strength - the theory of humans as defective creatures (Protagoras), of the human being as the animal whose nature has not yet been fixed (Nietzsche), of the human being, as a physiologically premature birth (Gehlen) . Animals, too, play, while they are growing up: they rehearse, imitate, try out experi­ mental actions. In man, this adolescent behaviour becomes an institution of social life as a whole. Let us call to mind the three main characteristics of play according to Huizinga. The first is freedom: by freedom as the freedom of play Huizinga does not mean freedom in the strong sense which is usually reserved for human beings, but freedom from function and purpose: if someone plays, they do not do it for a particular reason - they just play. 'Child and animal play because they enj oy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom.'21 The second characteristic Huizinga refers to is predicated on the difference between play and serious­ ness: 'play is not "ordinary" or "real" life'.22 Play is a piece of life which is placed, as it were, in brackets, takes place within a hypothetical, fictive space, is 'relieved of the burden of action', as one might say today. The third characteristic mentioned by Hui­ zinga is the ' closed and circumscribed' nature of play. 'It is "played out" within certain limits of time and place. It contains its own course and meaning. '23

These characteristics have been selected, of course, to encompass both animal play and play within culture. If one were to adopt them as such, one might doubt whether culture as a whole could be seen as play, or a derivative of play. For is not human cultural behaviour purpose-directed, is it not thoroughly serious and, as culture, all-embracing? But that is not what is meant by Huizinga. By approaching culture through play, he throws light on the former. As freely structured, conventional behaviour, culture is a means by which humanity rises above the necessities of life and, within a circumscribed space of ritual enactment, discovers the meaning of life in life itself. In taking this view Huizinga harks back to earlier theories of culture, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, according to which life, and particularly

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social life, is a game, a play on the great stage of the world, and the world is an imaginary space in which everyone acts their part, in which nothing is ever serious and no one is ever really themself.

Among these theoreticians of culture, Huizinga is especially close to the viewpoint of Schiller. In his letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man,24 Schiller elevated play to a central anthropo­ logical category; for him, the metaphor of life as play was not a critique of vanitas, a comment on the illusoriness and irrelevance of social life, but a formula for an ideal, or, better, for a future, reconciled state of human existence. Against Kant, who located human freedom in reason and understood it as freedom from the senses, he posited it as freedom from the purposes of reason, and found the reconciled middle between these two concepts in play.

The sense impulse excludes from its subject all spontaneity and freedom, the form impulse excludes all dependence, all passivity. But exclusion of freedom is physical, whilst exclusion of passivity is moral, necessity. Both impulses therefore compel the mind, the former through laws of nature, the latter through laws of Reason. So the play impulse, in which both combine to function, will compel the mind at once morally and physically: it will therefore, since it annuls all mere chance, annul all compulsion also, and set man free both physically and morally. (Letter 14)

No doubt, the dialectic in this quotation is somewhat too com­ pressed. Schiller's idea becomes transparent through its relation­ ship to Kant's Critique of Judgement. In it Kant had identified the free play of the mental powers, that is, of the senses and reason, as the basis of aesthetic pleasure. An object is described as beautiful by Kant if it gives rise to this free play of the mental powers. With Kant, but going beyond Kantian thought, Schiller saw in this free play true humanity, that is, freedom both from physical coercion and from the compulsions of morality. The idea of the sovereign human being makes its appearance here, a human being who can playfully engage in sensuality but also preserves autonomy in his or her moral life in face of the universal law. Even Kant had recognized, in the empirical interest in beauty (Critique of Judgement, §41), a need to share one's feelings with others, and therefore a force conducive to sociability.

Schiller hoped that through play human beings might escape the state of being torn between sensuality and reason, and might be liberated to enjoy the unity of their being. To the objection that this would 'strip reality of its seriousness

, /5 he replies: 'But why

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call it a mere game, when we consider that in every condition it is precisely play, and play alone, that makes man complete and displays at once his twofold nature?' (Letter 15). True humanity only begins beyond necessity and beyond reality, and thus beyond seriousness: 'Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing' (Letter 15).

The transition to ethics

Through the special status granted to it in both cultural philosophy and anthropology, play has a tendency to pass over into ethics. For if, like Huizinga, one sees in the continuation of play as culture that which distinguishes man from animals, or, like Schiller, ele­ vates play into the mode of living of true humanity, in both cases a principle of difference is introduced, on one side of which is the good - that is, the good life as play. But the transition to ethics opened up by this introduction of difference also brings the opposite of play into view. Play is seen in contradistinction to ordinary life, to real life, to necessity, to seriousness. At the moment when one seeks to give play an ethical status by contrast­ ing it to what is other, it suddenly appears in a different light. Elevated to a mode of life, it becomes the illusory utopia of an exceptional state made permanent, an unrealistic, fictitious attitude to life, an evasion of life's seriousness. It thus becomes merely an aesthetic mode of living, which is opposed to the ethical. That is how it was seen by S0ren Kierkegaard. In his book Either/Or26 he opposes the ethical mode of living, as that of seriousness and resolution, to the aesthetic mode, which is characterized by indif­ ference and a refusal of choice. Precisely in face of the playful, free­ floating, indifferent mode of life, seriousness becomes the decisive ethical category.

What is seriousness? In his book The Concept of Dread Kierke­ gaard tries to answer this question, in a section where he discusses 'certitude and inwardness'.27 The answer is difficult to articulate since seriousness, as Kierkegaard observes, cannot be defined. But this observation is, in a way, the answer, since it leads to the discovery of a new type of concept, which Kierkegaard calls the existential concept. What Kierkegaard is concerned with is not 'serious' as an adjective, as the term is used when one says: 'he has a serious expression'. Rather, he is concerned with uses of the

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word 'serious' which occur in statements like: 'I am speaking seriously', or 'I take philosophy seriously', or 'Now it's becoming serious'. In these usages the word 'serious' does not refer to a property of something, but to the 'How' of an act of living or a mode of being or, to speak with Kierkegaard, the 'How' of exist­ ence. I can do philosophy just to pass time, for fun, or I can take it seriously. One can argue and fight with someone - playfully - and suddenly the situation can turn serious. I can say something just to contribute to the conversation, out of pure politeness, or I can speak seriously. Each time matters become serious what is at stake is involvement, when suddenly I myself am at stake and the affair in question is no longer just an affair but my affair. It is I who am affected by the particular content. For this reason Kierkegaard frequently speaks of subjectivity. The philosopher Hermann Schmitz refers today to the subjective situation: the unity of an issue and the feeling that it is my issue; in this self-consciousness lies the seriousness of the matter.28

The definition of a moral question

My thesis, now, is that what constitutes a moral question is determined essentially by reference to the concept of seriousness. A moral question is one through which matters become serious. Accordingly, there are two main types of moral question, depend­ ing on whether matters become serious for the individual or for society. For this reason there are two parts of ethics which are structurally different, although connected. Questions which are serious for me are those which decide what kind of a human being I am. They are answered by the projecting of a mode of life in practice. Questions which are serious for society are those which decide in what kind of society we live. They are answered by discourses concerned with conventions for regulating social life.

It is now time to justify this conception of ethics. It is usual to regard moral questions as those which are concerned with good and evil, or - to put it more professionally - those in which claims about the validity or correctness of maxims, decisions or actions are at issue. The term 'moral questions' is also used to refer to questions of evaluation or questions relating to views of the world. In all these uses of the formulation 'moral questions' it is assumed that the matter in question should be judged on the basis of other propositions. It is of little account that, as a rule, these other

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propositions have the character of values, norms or imperatives . What matters is that, according to this ordinary conception, moral questions are those which can be decided hypothetically. To give one example: in the well-known dilemmas used by Kohlberg and Piaget in investigating the development of moral judgement, it is regarded as a moral question whether someone who has no money is entitled to break into a pharmacy in order to save a dangerously sick relative. The moral aspect of such a question lies in the fact that it is to be decided on the basis of certain presupposed values or moral principles. That means, however, that the question is decided without anyone being affected by it, and, in particular, without the person judging the question being affected by it.

This ought to make clear why I propose a different conception of what constitutes a moral question, and have linked the meaning of moral questions to the existential concept of seriousness. The aim is to drag ethics out of the ivory tower of ontological, analyti­ cal and meta-ethical discourse and place it radically within reality. A moral question is someone's question in the radical sense that someone not only poses and weighs the question, but, through it, calls himself into question. And a moral question is one which a society poses to itself, not in the sense that it is debated in public or philosophical discourses, but in that it decides the kind of society in which we live. Admittedly, moral questions are indeed decided within the horizon of general value-conceptions, whether of a material or formal kind - such as the value of life, the value of property or the principle of democracy and living together under the law. However, it is not that which makes them moral questions, but the fact that, through them, matters become serious, whether for me or for the society in which we live.

The first justification of this conception of what constitutes a moral question, and consequently of ethics itself, is derived from Kierkegaard's analysis of seriousness. The fact that a question is serious for me means that at the same time this question concerns me. The matter or circumstance addressed in the question is one which affects me, is one in which I am involved in such a way that the decision of the question regarding this circumstance also decides how and what I am. What is at issue, therefore, is a subjective situation the problems of which can never be solved hypothetically but only by existence.

This justification of the conception of a moral question as one through which matters become serious applies first of all, of course, only to the part of ethics concerned with the moral exist­ ence of the individual. Its application to the social sphere and to

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the moral meaning of questions debated in public discourse is only an analogy. For, strictly speaking, a subjectivity cannot be ascribed to society as a whole, since we who describe it can never be society itself. Moreover, we do not consider our society from outside, but only as participants in public discourse . If, in public discourse, one defines moral questions as those through which matters become serious, that means that our common understanding of the kind of a society we live in - for example, whether it is a liberal society, a democracy, a peace-loving society, a society with solidarity, etc. - depends on these questions.

To sum up, therefore, we can say with Kierkegaard that moral questions are those through which matters become serious because they are existential questions.

A re moral questions uncommon?

Moral questions are uncommon. With this thesis we come back to the relationship of seriousness to play. For just as play is defined on the basis of seriousness, so is seriousness on the basis of play. That moral questions are rare means that ordinary life is not, as a rule, serious: that is, it is a game, or practically a game. That does not prevent people from ordinarily taking it dreadfully seriously, and carrying on as if it were serious. But before expressing such criticism it is necessary to state why, in what sense, ordinary life is not serious. What does that mean, and why is it the case? The first and most important reason is the conventional way in which daily life runs its course. One follows the conventions because they are conventions - but they might also be different. One stays within the bounds of the customary, and as a result the question as to who one is oneself does not arise. The second reason is the general replaceability of everyone. Ordinary life is so organized that, wherever it is possible at all, I could be replaced by someone else with similar competence. The average life of work and mobility neither requires me as myself, nor does its functioning depend specially on me. On the contrary, it functions all the better the less of my subjectivity I bring into it, that is, the less it has to do with me and the more I myself merely correspond to general functions in which I am in principle replaceable. In sociology that is called role-based behaviour. The human being is integrated socially by means of specific roles he plays. In the end, what matters to society as a whole remains, as a rule, external to the individual. There are

I 08 The Moral Life

fashions and trends, political tendencies, rivalries and ideologies. All of this could be different, and the individual simply plays the game. That even applies to questions which have serious implica­ tions for society. The structural difference between the moral questions which affect the individual and the moral questions which affect the conventions for regulating social behaviour is precisely what makes it possible for the individual to participate fully in public and moral discourses without it thereby being decided what kind of a human being he is. A German doctor, for example, can reject euthanasia on the basis of general consider­ ations, such as the lessons of historical experience, and yet facilitate death in an individual case in which he is personally challenged. It can be seen here, from the perspective of seriousness, how the Kantian categorical imperative is seeking to yoke together by force two parts of ethics which do not necessarily belong together. The reasons why one can want something to become a general law have to do with our social conception of ourselves, but not necessarily with how well one is human or with what kind of a human being one is.29 I said 'not necessarily' - in an individual case, of course, it may happen that someone makes a public concern their own. But in general, politics and public discourse are not a serious matter for the individual.

To recognize this and, more generally, to recognize that ordinary life is not serious is, paradoxically, the beginning of morality. I said just now that people frequently take ordinary life dreadfully seriously and behave as if it were serious. That does not mean, however, that they are not aware of the conventionality of their behaviour. They take conformity to customary behaviour to be morality, they nourish their self-confidence on the illusion that they are irreplaceable, and they believe that they are realizing themselves when they are merely following fashions and trends. To see through life as a game and to take part in it as a player, competently but calmly, actually places one in a position where matters can suddenly become serious. On this point Schiller was right: life as play is indeed the state of freedom - that is, the state in which one can distance oneself from what goes on, what is customary, and confront life with serenity. But this state is, after all, only the beginning and the precondition of morality. Thus, Kierkegaard defines the aesthetic mode of life, the mode in which one stands playfully outside life and enacts one's life as a game, as a preliminary stage on the path of life, on the way to the ethical mode. This transition takes place at the point where matters become serious.

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From this we derive the second reason for defining what a moral question is through its relation to seriousness. Seriousness is that which breaks through the arbitrariness of life. Matters become serious when customary practices no longer count, when we become irreplaceable and when the goals we pursue in ordinary life are no longer merely external to us.

Moral questions are those through which matters become serious because they present themselves bindingly.

When do matters become serious?

It is this binding nature of seriousness, we can say now, which breaks through ordinary life - the life in which one is always replaceable and everything could always be different. When mat­ ters become serious we are challenged as ourselves; we cannot evade the challenge, and must respond existentially. These, then, are the two characterizations of seriousness. A question, a situation is serious when it challenges us bindingly and when we must respond by the way we live our life. But when do questions and situations become serious?

In the analogous case, when a question or a problem is serious for society's conception of itself, it is easy to give an answer: when the basic moral ideas which determine society's conception of itself are touched upon or challenged.

The question as to when matters become serious for someone cannot be answered in general terms because what is at stake at that moment is, precisely, the kind of person he will become. But what one can say is that seriousness breaks in at times of decisive or critical biographical constellations. That is, as such, a tautology, since such constellations are the very ones in which it is decided what kind of a human being the person in question is. But it does lead on to the ethical doctrine of the kairos, of the right and decisive moment. Since antiquity this doctrine has raised the question of the temporal nature of moral action. For it states that, from a moral standpoint, there are differences between times. For most of the time life runs its course as if by itself, or is carried along by customary behaviour. But there are constellations which interrupt this continuity, and on them depends what kind of a human being one is and how one is to continue in normal, customary life. The doctrine of the kairos also contains two further moments: on the one hand, it states that the kairos is a constellation,

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that is, a situation which does not depend solely on the person concerned, or on that person's immanent development: the kairos is something which befalls the individual concerned. On the other hand, the doctrine of the kairos points to the importance of alertness or, better, readiness. The doctrine states that one can miss one's kairos. Consequently, the project of a moral life calls for attentive­ ness, a flair for the decisive situation, and a readiness to be resolute when the situation arrives - that is, not to ponder endlessly and postpone decisions.

However, that does not say enough on the question as to when matters become serious. For the kairos could also be a favourable opportunity for something one always intended to do in any case. We do not wish to understand it in that way here, but as the situation in which matters become serious. What makes them become serious?

This question, too, cannot be answered in general terms since it always poses itself for the individual in a particular situation. One can, however, identify what makes a certain situation or constel­ lation serious for an individual: namely, the fact that they are challenged as the human being they are. Something of this kind must be contained in the situation which hurls in the individual's face the message: tua res agitur - now it is for you to act. For only in this sense are they struck, affected. There must be in the situation, accordingly, something which addresses or appeals to the individual concerned, and makes them aware both that the situation is inescapable and that they are an irreplaceable part of it - Hie Rhodus, hie salta! Now it's serious, you can't make any more excuses: now show who you are!

Naturally, this should not be understood to mean that the individual concerned could not find excuses or evade the issue. For the fact that one can miss the kairos is one of its characteristics. Thus, while it can be said that the seriousness stems from the constellation, one must, as the person concerned, engage with it. But that there is a certain preponderance of the constellation over the individual, that the seriousness really comes upon them, can be seen from the fact that even evading the issue has consequences for the kind of human being they are.

That the seriousness which makes a situation into a moral challenge stems from the constellation has been described in different ways in the recent debate on ethics. I should like to mention two instances, Emmanuel U�vinas's conversation of the 'face' and Hans Jonas's discourse on responsibility.

In his reflections on the human face Levinas attempts to show

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that the other human being, purely through his or her manner of appearance, contains an appeal that we be affected morally. By the term 'face' he refers primarily to the human face, from which, no doubt, this appeal does emanate. But, on the one hand, he does not want necessarily to restrict himself to the face, but refers to the whole appearance of the human being, and, on the other, by the term 'countenance' he would like to articulate the vivid or holy quality of this appearance, in other words, its moral appeal. This appeal, for Levinas, has primarily the character of a prohibition. The face says: Thou shalt not kill. By interpreting it in this way he derives from the appeal, or attributes to it, an ambivalent character. For where there is a prohibition there is also a challenge to transgress it. In the manner of experiencing the countenance Levinas also sees an invitation to murder. Under­ stood more generally, though in a weaker sense, the 'manner of encountering the face' is an experience of the other who appeals to me, or, to put it more aptly, of my other. We can then say retro­ spectively with Schmitz that the other is part of my subjective situation, or that the other demands that I respond with serious­ ness. The primary response to this demand, according to Levinas, is language.

This brings us very close to what Jonas understands by responsi­ bility. For Jonas, responsibility is the response to a moral demand emanating from a situation, whether it arises from a person or a thing. In his discussion of this demand Jonas does not remain on the phenomenological level but attempts to justify its possibility ontologically. He finds this possibility in the observation that there are entities which have their ends within themselves. This has been defined most clearly by Heidegger in his analysis of Dasein, that is, of the human being as an entity. Human beings are entities in whose existence their being is at stake. To perceive such being as endowed with an inner purpose means, according to Jonas, to be conscious of an appeal to serve this inner purpose. Of course, one must be receptive to such an appeal, or open oneself to it. One can also, however, close oneself and make the being with which one is concerned into a pure thing or fact. The prototype of a situation in which responsibility for a certain entity is called for is the parent-child situation. 'This is obvious for parental responsi­ bility, which really, in time and in essence, is the archetype of all responsibility (and also, genetically, I believe, the origin of every disposition for it, certainly its elementary school) . The child as a whole and in all its possibilities, not only in its immediate needs, is its object.'3D To be together with a helpless child is, Jonas says,

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to experience the demand to help this being. He even believes that an origin of morality in natural history can be identified in this demand. Responsibility in Jonas's sense is the existential manner in which I react to such a demand. Its structure is therefore asymmetrical. I have a responsibility for someone, but that person has not necessarily a responsibility for me.

In the passage mentioned, Jonas discusses the parent-child relationship. Undoubtedly, however, he does not want what he says about the moral demand which emanates from an existent being, and the responsibility corresponding to it, to be limited to the preconditions of this situation. For in a parent-child relation­ ship we must assume that the partners already belong together from the start, so that the care for the child might in some cases also be care for oneself in the narrower sense. The solidarity in which one allows oneself to be affected by what affects the child could also be founded in a prior 'We'. To make this point still clearer, I should like to recall the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10: 25-37.

Jesus relates this parable in response to the question: 'Who is my neighbour?' This question arises compellingly from Christian ethics, the fundamental commandment of which is charity or love of one's neighbour. Does charity require, for example, that one should love family members, neighbours, members of one's club, fellow citizens? The answer Jesus gives through this parable is: my neighbour is the human being who needs me in a chance constel­ lation - whoever he or she may be.

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he j ourneyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine. (Luke 10: 30ff)31

By making the priest and the Levite fail to meet the moral demand represented by the injured man, Jesus undoubtedly is directing his barbs against the professional good people of his society. What is more important, however, is that he refers to the man who helps as a foreigner, who therefore has no original relationship of soli­ darity with the injured man. In his action the Samaritan merely

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responds to the moral appeal which is presented by the wounded man's need for help.

With regard to our question as to when matters become serious, what we can learn from the parable is that the situations in which matters become serious certainly do not need to be prepared for in our own biography, but can be constellations in which we find ourselves unawares. And the obligation they entail - this is the other point - certainly does not need to be determined by a pre­ existing bond to the persons or things forming the constellation. On the other hand, one should not interpret the examples men­ tioned - the parent-child relationship, the Good Samaritan - in a restrictive sense in which the seriousness which makes the situ­ ation a moral one always emanates from persons, or even from persons who suffer. These examples have only been chosen because they are the most immediately plausible. But, naturally, situations of political struggle or of co-operation in work, or perhaps even relationships within or to nature, can also be of such a kind that one feels: now you are being challenged, now it is up to you. But equally, the examples should not be understood to mean that the seriousness of a situation can only come from outside. If one has chosen a moral life or wants to practise a moral mode of life to any degree, it is entirely possible to take a situation seriously which, in the daily life of work and travel, is not serious at all, that is, which could be dealt with within the framework of customary behaviour. That would mean not letting things just happen, but making them one's own concern. Even if it should be noted that seriousness is something which is primarily experienced passively, nevertheless this transition to an active mode of behav­ iour by which, through commitment to a cause (or to persons), one makes it or them one's own concern - this transition is crucial in giving lasting content to a moral life. That would probably also be an appropriate interpretation of the current discourse about self­ realization. For self-realization cannot, as is popularly supposed, be founded on something pre-existing within the self, but consists in giving content to selfhood by taking seriously something outside oneself, that is, by making a situation determined by persons or things one's own concern.

This manner of taking seriously should not, however, be con­ fused with the everyday way in which business, chatter or custom­ ary behaviour is taken seriously. It remains the case that seriousness only receives its determination in contradistinction to play. Seriousness characterizes the moral life precisely because it does not encompass the whole of life. The conception of life as

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play, and the distancing implied by it, remain preconditions of a moral life. Only someone who knows ordinary life to be a game and can play it will occasionally, and at the decisive moment, take situations seriously.