Moralisms, or ethical systems of rules and norms, fail to mediate the transcendental character of the Ethical. They are contingent, provisional, and given.
Goodness cannot be measured or calculated, demonstrated in the excess of grace in contradistinction to the moderation of Greek morality (reason=virtue=happiness).
Goodness is better understood as organic and pulsing than abstract and static.
Conventional ethics has a genetic character of economic transaction and reductionism. The economic character of ethics is predicated upon the transaction of a commodity.
A commodity is a traded good which benefits the receiving party. Participation in conventional ethics is constituted by the expectation of a commodity to the benefit of the participant.
The excess of love in the ethics of Jesus drives against the cold reduction and calculation of conventional ethics and radicalizes the commodity.
Thus, the genetic structure of ethics in the teachings of Jesus is the excess of grace over and against merit and economic exchange and the impossibility of the transcendental character of the Ethical (Ethos) to be mediated by a given norm or rule.
The irreducibility of what is good and right should keep us on our feet, not as blind judges but with eyes peeled to see the particularity of the Other, the singularity of each situation.
This irreducible ethos can only get its grip on the mind when mediated through the heart.
Jesus invites us to return to the organic structure of the transcendent good as mediated through the living experience, the being-in-the-world and angsty, emotionally laden quality of giving-a-damn that constitutes real human ethical action.
Of course, we could just as easily throw out the abstract jargon and call it love.
The irreducible call of love is the event that lies underneath the ethical dilemma and behind the eyes of those who are suffering.
What we need to be confronted with are not lines on paper but lines on withering faces.
We don't need the blackness of ink but the blackness of neediness in the eyes of the homeless staring back at us as we walk the street.
It's not ultimately the bodies of dissertations that will give us a "moral compass" but the bodies of orphans and widows, the bodies of Others who demand our love and care.
Goodness cannot be measured or calculated, demonstrated in the excess of grace in contradistinction to the moderation of Greek morality (reason=virtue=happiness).
Goodness is better understood as organic and pulsing than abstract and static.
Conventional ethics has a genetic character of economic transaction and reductionism. The economic character of ethics is predicated upon the transaction of a commodity.
A commodity is a traded good which benefits the receiving party. Participation in conventional ethics is constituted by the expectation of a commodity to the benefit of the participant.
The excess of love in the ethics of Jesus drives against the cold reduction and calculation of conventional ethics and radicalizes the commodity.
Thus, the genetic structure of ethics in the teachings of Jesus is the excess of grace over and against merit and economic exchange and the impossibility of the transcendental character of the Ethical (Ethos) to be mediated by a given norm or rule.
The irreducibility of what is good and right should keep us on our feet, not as blind judges but with eyes peeled to see the particularity of the Other, the singularity of each situation.
This irreducible ethos can only get its grip on the mind when mediated through the heart.
Jesus invites us to return to the organic structure of the transcendent good as mediated through the living experience, the being-in-the-world and angsty, emotionally laden quality of giving-a-damn that constitutes real human ethical action.
Of course, we could just as easily throw out the abstract jargon and call it love.
The irreducible call of love is the event that lies underneath the ethical dilemma and behind the eyes of those who are suffering.
What we need to be confronted with are not lines on paper but lines on withering faces.
We don't need the blackness of ink but the blackness of neediness in the eyes of the homeless staring back at us as we walk the street.
It's not ultimately the bodies of dissertations that will give us a "moral compass" but the bodies of orphans and widows, the bodies of Others who demand our love and care.
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