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

Introduction

Introduction Svend Andersen and Kees van Kooten Niekerk Løgstrup’s ethics of the ethical demand was formulated half a century ago. Nevertheless, it seems to be receiving renewed attention today. This might, in part, be a result of its tendency to reflect several important trends in contemporary moral thinking . Here one could think of the widespread skepticism towards “modern” efforts to give a purely rational foundation for claims about moral behavior. Løgstrup related himself to the modern project in its Kantian version. Against the idea of the rational agent he set up a description of the interrelatedness of human being. In his opinion, humans do not have to discover or decide about moral life—our life as such is ordered with ethics already “built in,” so to speak. We cannot encounter others without being confronted with the radical demand to concern ourselves with their lives. Responsibility is a basic feature of human existence. This position lay close at hand for a Lutheran theologian, but Løgstrup developed and formulated it with the aid of phenomenological analysis. The appeal of his ethics therefore rests not so much on rational argument as on the careful descriptions of elementary features of interpersonal existence. In his early work, Løgstrup put trust or self-exposure and the corresponding radical demand at the center of his ethical phenomenology. However, as can be seen from later texts, some of which are now collected in Beyond the Ethical Demand, important changes took place in his thinking. Most significant among these changes is the “appearance” of the concept or phenomenon 1 Andersen-00.intro 10/19/07 1:50 PM Page 1 of “sovereign expressions of life.” These include phenomena such as trust, mercy, compassion, and openness of speech. Løgstrup originally regarded trust as the interpersonal feature out of which the ethical demand arises. But at this later stage he took it to be an ethical expression in its own right. Like the other expressions, trust is a spontaneous showing of regard for the other. Its sovereignty consists in the fact that we, as moral agents, do not have it under our control. We cannot produce trust by exercising our will. Rather, trust “takes us by surprise.” Like trust, mercy is also an ethical phenomenon, both in the sense that it is a way of taking care of the other, and in the sense that it is a consummation of human life. As ways of taking care of others, the expressions of life fulfill the ethical demand—before the demand has even made itself felt. The sovereign expressions of life are therefore more fundamental ethical phenomena than the demand that derives from them. The introduction of the sovereign expressions of life is related to a number of other changes and clarifications. First, it becomes clear in Løgstrup that ethics as such does not necessarily have a religious foundation : the expressions of life are “open to religious interpretation,” but their ethical force is not dependent upon it. Second, even if Løgstrup still makes a clear distinction between what could be called “primary ethical phenomena” (such as the sovereign expressions of life and the ethical demand) and “ordinary” morality (consisting of norms, ideals, character traits, moral reasoning, and so on), the latter are granted a more prominent position. Besides drawing this distinction, Løgstrup proceeds to investigate the relationship between the two sets of phenomena. Thus, in some cases he regards norms as transformations of the expressions of life. Third, political ethics is given a more central place, and in the political domain, too, Løgstrup sees transformed expressions of life at work. The political-ethical ideal of helping those in need, for instance, can be seen as derived from mercy as an expression of life. The contributions in the present volume deal with significant themes in Løgstrup’s later ethical writing without losing sight of the argument in The Ethical Demand. Several authors consider Løgstrup’s analysis of trust, which still plays an important role, now as one of the sovereign expressions of life. The analysis of trust is also discussed in several essays as an important instance of Løgstrup’s thorough phenomenological description . Another recurring issue is the question of whether Løgstrup’s Svend Andersen and Kees van Kooten Niekerk 2 Andersen-00.intro 10/19/07 1:50 PM Page 2 ethics is defensible on purely...