Anxiety, Identity, and Reality

The Will of God Ep. 6. This week we try to think through the reasons for the anxiety that seems constituent of modern life and seeking to do the will of God. Here is the passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics that we finished with:All that we have said thus far implies that we have abandoned the abstract notion, largely dominant in ethical thought, of an isolated individual who has available an absolute criterion by which to choose continually and exclusively between a clearly recognized good and a clearly recognized evil. Such an isolated individual does not exist…The error of such an abstract ethical scheme is this: only the isolated individual is considered ethically relevant; only what is absolute and universal is seen as normative; and only the choice between the clearly recognized good and the clearly recognized evil is acknowledged as an ethical decision…What this amounts to is individuals pulling back from the living responsibility of their historical existence into a private realization of ethical ideals by which they see their own personal goodness guaranteed…this attitude will lead, by way of withdrawing from responsibility for the whole, to a purely private bourgeois existence. However, in practice the ethical isolation of the individual is a fictitious notion. For no one can withdraw completely from human community, indeed, everyone’s life is dependent on it…This means that a human being necessarily lives in encounter with other human beings and that this encounter entails being charged, in ever so many ways, with responsibility for the other human being. History arises out of accepting this responsibility for other human beings or for entire communities or groups of communities. Individuals do not act merely for themselves alone; each individual incorporates the selves of several people, perhaps even a very large number. The father of a family, for example, can no longer act as if he were merely an individual. In his own self, he incorporates the selves of those family members for whom he is responsible. Everything he does is determined by this sense of responsibility. Any attempt to act and live as if he were alone would not only abdicate his responsibility, but also deny at the same time the reality on which his responsibility is based. For he does not cease to be the father of a family; rather, instead of being a good father, he is now simply a bad one. He is a good father if he takes on and acts according to the responsibility reality places on him…The moment a person accepts responsibility for other people–and only in so doing does the person live in reality–the genuine ethical situation arises…The subject of the action is no longer the isolated individual, but the one who is responsible for other people. The action’s norm is not a universal principle, but the concrete neighbor, as given to me by God.Further Resources…Chris Green on post-individualism, Bonhoeffer, and rebuilding the church:Rowan Williams, “Truth, faith and politics in a post-truth world: exploring Bonhoeffer today”:Stanley Hauerwas, “Church Matters”: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com