Concern for the Other: Perspectives on the Ethics of K. E. Løgstrup

The Liquid Modern Adventures of the "Sovereign Expression of Life"

The Liquid Modern Adventures of the “Sovereign Expression of Life” Zygmunt Bauman I came across the first English edition of Knud Ejler Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand by chance, during a sabbatical term in the Newfoundland Memorial University. While collecting ideas and sources for my Postmodern Ethics, I browsed through the library shelves in search of a version of contemporary ethical thought betraying, however weakly, an affinity for and resonance with, or at least a sharing of the ground with, Emanuel Levinas’s ethical teachings, focused on Fürsein and the idea of “unconditional responsibility.” I believed then, as I believe now, that the Levinasian unique location of ethics “before ontology” was crucial for a sober critical assessment of modern ethical practice and for facing the challenge presented by its current transformations. Before I opened the Newfoundland copy of The Ethical Demand (I was perhaps the first reader to do this), my hunt, having brought thus far not a single worthwhile trophy, had been an utterly frustrating experience; indeed, I remember being a day or two away from abandoning further efforts. But the wasted time was suddenly, in a flash, compensated for me many times over once I had read on the first page of the great Aarhusian’s book his declaration of intent: “If a proclamation is to have any relevance for us it must answer to something in our own existence : a perplexity in which we find ourselves, an inescapable contradiction, a fate we refuse to accept, expectations we entertain , or difficulties that loom before us” (Løgstrup 1997, 1). 113 C H A P T E R S I X Andersen-06 10/19/07 2:15 PM Page 113 THE RISE AND FALL OF LEGISLATIVE ETHICS Mainstream ethical philosophy, which is abominably slow to incorporate and assimilate Levinas’s and Løgstrup’s inspiration, has sound reasons to worry these days. Having invested its hopes of ethical progress in the moral self ’s conformity to a rule and in the ultimate noncontradictoriness of moral attitudes and moral actions, that philosophy is bound to view the current ongoing transformations of life-politics1 and its social setting with apprehension, as retrograde developments, auguring a profound moral crisis of contemporary society. The vision of crisis is, however , as always whenever a crisis is announced, a by-product of a preconceived ideal pattern: a projection of the assumptions that overtly or tacitly underpin mainstream ethical philosophy onto social realities that no longer seem to validate them (that is, if they ever did). Ethical philosophy of the modern era could not but reflect the legislative and order-building ambition, the defining trait of modernity. It also had to be animated by the foremost characteristics of modern spirit— the unshakeable trust in the ultimate and irrevocable triumph of reason over other human faculties. That confidence re-presented the ambition as the forecast of imminent future. The pronouncements of ethical philosophers could not but bear an indelible mark of that ambition and that trust. Like the statesmen and social reformers bent on legislating harmony , peace, and conflict-free order into social reality with the help of a legal code meticulously cleansed of blank spots and all traces of ambiguity , the philosophers vested their hopes in a code of ethical rules purified of all ambivalence and contradiction and bound to be designed, sooner or later, with the reliable assistance of reason. The confidence of philosophers was regularly endorsed, reinforced, and replenished by the legislative energy and determination showed by the political rulers in their pursuit of the order-building ambitions. That confidence and the imposing ethical/philosophical edifice founded on it, however, suffered a tremendous blow and were shaken beyond repair once the ambitions began to fade and the attention and concerns of the statesmen drifted to other targets. With ever growing numbers of life-servicing tasks shifting away from the legislating powers of the state to impersonal forces of the financial and consumer markets and to the personal but much less powerful Zygmunt Bauman 114 Andersen-06 10/19/07 2:15 PM Page 114 resources of individual life-politics, a progressive diversification rather than the hoped-for universality is fast becoming the dominant trend. The prospects of divergence now seem considerably more credible than the cultural convergence and leveling of differences of traditions, customs, Weltanschauungen, life strategies, and lifestyles anticipated by the philosophers and worked and fought for by...