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Summary

Now that we have reached the end of this account of ethics in its historical and social context, and in the context of our present stage of civilization, it will be worthwhile to look back over what has been said. I started from a critique of philosophical ethics which, through its ambition as a special discipline, is in danger of becoming an arcane meta-ethics, or a professional game for spe­ cialists in ethical discourse. I then defined what moral questions actually are, and noted that we live in an age when moral ques­ tions are actually being posed, both for the individual and for society. Moral questions are to be seen as those through which matters become serious. A question is serious when it decides what kind of person I am, or what kind of society we live in - or how we understand our society. This gives rise to two main fields of ethics, the field of the personal life-project and the field of moral discourse. Questions which, in being answered, shape our personal life-project can only be resolved existentially. Moral questions concerning the constitution of our society are resolved by establish­ ing social conventions which then regulate social behaviour. The . field of the project of a moral1ife, on the one hand, and the field of moral discourse, on the other, represent the two main parts of a philosophical ethics. Between them lies the area of customary behaviour, which mediates between the two. It is a part of ethics, but not of philosophical ethics, in that customary behaviour can only be investigated empirically and can only be mediated through education.

Ethics is radically concrete; that is to say, moral questions only arise in real situations and can only be dealt with in relation to them. For this reason a large part of this book has been concerned

164 Summary

with the general conditions of moral situations here and now. These include the historical preconditions of our society, its cul­ tural foundations and especially its moral culture, the stage of development of civilization and, finally, the whole area of existing social conventions, from customary behaviour through laws to fundamental and human rights.

The project of a moral life is a matter for each individual. Nevertheless, the structures which a mode of living must have in order to qualify as moral can be determined in general terms. The basic requirement is that one takes one's life seriously. If one's life is to conform to a project, one must take explicit responsibility for it. That presupposes selfhood and the ability to act. As regards its content, the project of a moral life can be defined by the fact that it is concerned with being-human-well. Under the given conditions, this being-human-well defines itself essentially by resistance to the dangers to which humane qualities are subjected by technical civilization.

In the field of social conventions, moral questions do not arise from every regulation affecting social behaviour. Social conven­ tions become morally relevant when they touch on our basic conception of the society in which we live, and the concept of humanity implicit in it. Such questions arise today with regard to the regulation of social behaviour towards external nature, towards the nature that we ourselves are and towards foreigners. Which other areas of social behaviour may become morally relevant is difficult to anticipate, because society's understanding of itself is never laid out fully and explicitly before us. Moreover, this self­ understanding is determined not merely by the codified constitu­ tion but by society's historical conception of itself. In this way, a problem which decides a society's relationship to its own past is always a moral problem.

Finally, the question arises once more as to the connection between the different parts of ethics. While the division between questions of the moral life-project and questions of the conventions of social behaviour is an analytical one, it also characterizes, of course, a certain state of social development. It is one of the factors which mark out the present state as modern. To come to terms with this division it is necessary to place ethics within the concrete historical situation. That does not mean simply accepting the division. Political commitment has been mentioned as one link between the two spheres. One form of political commitment is to make it the content of a moral life to take a stand on certain moral questions which concern social regulations. Another possibility, of

Summary 165

course, would be to attempt to lead an exemplartJ life, by demon­ strating through one's own life certain forms of behaviour one considers correct for society as a whole, thereby becoming politi­ cally effective through one's mode of living. Both these possibilities do, however, presuppose the division between one's own life­ project and social conventions. But the practical mediation between them is carried out incessantly and day by day by customary behaviour. If we have distinguished somewhat trenchantly between customary behaviour and the moral realm itself, because moral questions with regard both to one's own life and to social life present themselves precisely at the point where customary behaviour is no longer sufficient, it is nevertheless customary behaviour which places moral decisions, once taken, on a perma­ nent footing, that is, it turns them into habits. These habits, and the resulting solidity of modes of living, reliability of character and predictability of behaviour in social life, are necessary if a project of a moral life is to become a mode of living, and if social behaviour is to conform to the basic social consensus without constant recourse to explicit rules. So, in the end, the realm of customary behaviour must be paid its due. Even though it is not the realm of true moral behaviour, it is the humus of that behav­ iour, the ground from which it constantly arises and to which it returns: the ethos.