An Essay Review of: Global Responsibility. In Search of a New World Ethic by Hans Küng (review)

AN ESSAY REVIEW OF: GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY. IN SEARCH OF A NEW WORLD ETHIC. By Hans Rung. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1993. Translated from the German Projekt Weltehos. Pp. 158. $12.95. VAN RENSSELAER POTTER* Since the early 1960's Hans Kiing has wrestled with the problem posed by the professed beliefs of the world religions and the unceasing conflict between their followers. He goes beyond the facts that are obvious to anyone, for example as seen in Lebanon or more recently in the three-way conflict between Croats, Serbs, and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, each professing a different brand of religion. He attacks the fundamental problem ofhow to accomplish peace between disparate religions by an expansion of values toward a universal world ethic that is globally responsible to "the true interests and needs of men and women in accord with nature" (pp. 20-21) and to the survival of an on-going human society. Without actually saying so, Kiing is staking out the boundaries of a transcendent global ethic, not available to philosophic discourse, that is actually a global theology with the long-term survival of the human species as its goal. His hopeful views, developed over many years, have been carefully framed in the present small volume. Skeptical as we may be, we need to examine his agenda. Trained in the rigors of Catholicism, he has moved away from church dogma as he expanded from On Being a Christian [1] to Theology for the Third Millennium : An Ecumenical View [2], at a time when other theologists, and indeed moralists in general, had not moved beyond the next decade, or, at the most, the 21st century. Speaking from a strong position as Director of the Ecumenical Institute at the University of Tübingen, he has emerged as perhaps the only person qualified to draft the 5,000-word "Declaration of a Global Ethic" for the recent Parliament of the World *McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.© 1994 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 0031-5982/94/3704-0886$01.00. 546 Van Rensselaer Potter ¦ Global Responsibility Religions in Chicago on the 100th Anniversary of the original parliament . And it speaks for his unique role as an ethicist that Paul Kennedy, in his book Preparingfor the 21st Century [3], cites Kiing when he declares that "In societies where fundamentalist forces block open inquiry and debate, where politicians, to attract the support of special interests, inveigh against foreign peoples or ethnic minorities, and where a commercialized mass media and popular culture drive serious issues to the margins , the possibility that education will introduce deeper understanding of global trends is severely limited." Referring specifically to Kiing, and to Kiing only, he comments, "Because we are all members of a world citizenry, we also need to equip ourselves with a system of ethics, a sense of fairness, and a sense of proportion as we consider the various ways in which, collectively or individually, we can better prepare for the twenty-first century" (p. 341). Hans Kiing has dealt with Christianity and the World Religions [4] and has discussed "The God of the Non-Christian Religions" [5], but he has not ventured into a discussion of any credo that might be identified as that of a non-Christian scientist. But as a matter of fact, he gives us such a credo. The time is appropriate for a discussion of what a global ethic should include, and the readers of thisjournal, who certainly have their own personal answers to the basic questions, can profit from a careful reading of Küng's latest book. They may have insights into the problems that face the human species as it moves beyond the 21st century into the remainder of the third millennium and beyond. They may have insights that go beyond Küng's Theology for the Third Millennium, or the present volume, but they can benefit from an open-minded examination of a book by the only theologist who has declared that there is "No Survival without a World Ethic. Why we need a global ethic" (pp. 1—69). The style of the book is worked out in...