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Moralism and Anti-Moralism: Aspects of Bonhoeffer’s Christian Ethic

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Abstract

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thinking about ethics and Christianity is a fascinating attempt to combine different, and often conflicting, strands in the Christian intellectual tradition. In this article, I outline his thinking, analyse the advantages and disadvantages in his approach, and relate it to developments in contemporary philosophy. His critique of an excessive stress upon principles and abstraction in opposition to a concern for concrete circumstances is, I argue, best seen as a necessary critique of what I call moralism rather than morality. It is also related to recent philosophical theories of particularism and the debates about ‘emergency ethics’ in current philosophy. On the negative side, Bonhoeffer has a tendency to treat non-Christian ethics as necessarily relativist and at times is excessively influenced by the elements in Christian theological tradition that are hostile to the natural and to non-Christian philosophy. In addition, his invocation of ‘the Divine mandates’ seems to have undesirable implications for some genuine values in liberal democratic theory and practice.

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Notes

  1. Selwyn Grave, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia from 1961–1981, is a contender for the honour, but he was originally, at least, a New Zealander. Julius Kovesi was another Catholic who practiced philosophy with distinction, first at the University of New South Wales and then at the University of Western Australia, but that was slightly after Max. Dr. Vernon Rice at Melbourne University was another with claims and roughly contemporary with Max, but he published very little and was in the Thomist camp with his own personal twist to it. He was an eccentric but influential figure with some of the brighter students but not as well known in the wider world as Max.

  2. In what follows, I shall use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ as synonyms. There is some point in distinguishing them in some contexts but those issues are not directly relevant to my discussion here.

  3. The quotation is from the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible.

  4. There is a hardback version of this Bethge edition (Macmillan, New York, 1964) in which unfortunately the pagination and the arrangement of chapters differ (Bonhoeffer gave no real guide to the best arrangement). My references will be to the Fontana paperback, but I will give chapter and section headings to guide those who use the hardback.

  5. The full sentence indicates even more the relevance of natural philosophy to faith: ‘Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.’

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  1. School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    C. A. J. Coady

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Coady, C.A.J. Moralism and Anti-Moralism: Aspects of Bonhoeffer’s Christian Ethic. SOPHIA 51, 449–464 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0340-2

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