This is the twenty third Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic 18) The Ethical Field  19) MetaEthics 20) Comparative Ethics  21) The Ethical Model 22) Ethics and the Individual

Ethics and Society

Donivan Bessinger, MD

How should we live?

The search for the answer to Socrates’ question has taken us from the writings of ancient philosophers to the research laboratories of modern physics and biology. We have considered the works of many discoverers, and have made discoveries as diverse as fossils carefully scraped from eroded earthen banks, and dreams patiently analyzed while listening to troubled people. After more than twenty-five centuries of discoveries since Confucius and Heraclitus, mankind is discovering again the vision of the wholeness of natural creation held by ancients. Again we quote The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean:

All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The courses of the seasons, and of the sun and moon, are pursued without any collision among them. The smaller energies are like river currents; the greater energies are seen in mighty transformations. It is this which makes heaven and earth so great. (1)

How should we live? How can we translate the ancient vision of the wholeness of the unconscious natural world into a vision of wholeness in the conscious world in which we live?

Is it a utopia that we seek? Is a utopia possible? Or even desirable?

The usual idea of utopia is the idea of some sort of perfected society. Taken in its usual sense, the utopian society must be perfected through constraints which are usually externally conceived and imposed. Another problem with the idea of perfected society is that perfection implies completion. Perfection means an end to the development process, an end to change, and indeed an end to process itself.

Life is a process requiring change. Life requires striving. It is a process with a goal, at the minimum, the goal of survival. The concept of utopia requires contemplation of a state contrary to biological truth. In that sense of perfected society, utopia is contrary to life.

Yet it is useful to contemplate the goal of a well-ordered society. In that sense, the perfect society would be such society as would result from the maximum fullfillment of its individuals. Fullfillment must not be conceived in any sense of blind selfishness, however, but in the sense of the barrier-free self, in which consciousness and unconsciousness are integrated.

“Utopian” society is better thought of as a society of wholeness, in which individuals reach to discover the fullness of life, in full respect of other life and of the fund of knowledge and the pursuit of truth. For utopia to exist as a social concept, it must first exist as an individual concept, describing the individual’s sense of harmony of self with others.

However, as the natural ethic of reverence for life draws us toward individual wholeness, it also inevitably draws us to seek wholeness for society. That society, as we have argued, is now one society, one global civilization. Under the ethic of reverence for life, each of us lives under an imperative to seek civilization’s survival and development as we concurrently seek our own.

In some respects, history can be seen as the competition of groups seeking an imperialistic hegemony over the ideas or territories of others. All of us are prone to build empires of financial, political, ideological, or psychological authority. The reductionistic worldview of positivism, which sees the parts not the whole, gives rise to competitive philosophies. Such a view of life process mistakes the “survival of the fittest” and “law of the jungle.” It construes the world as hostile and survival as a code which justifies spreading power over others for the sake of self above all else.

By contrast, the systems worldview does not see life’s challenge as aggressive dominance of the “fittest” over the weak, but (as Dobzhansky points out) as survival of the fit. (2) The “law of the jungle” is the law of equilibrium, not hostile but neutral. Life seeks its balance in an interlocking web of lives and processes. The fit survive through finding equilibrium with all other life. Reverence for life yields a code, not of imperialism, but of imperativism, always reaching out to help meet the needs of life. Schweitzer:

In no way does reverence for life allow the individual to give up interest in the world. It is unceasingly compelling him to be concerned about all the life that is round about him, and to feel himself responsible for it. Whenever life whose development we can influence is in question, our concern with it, and our responsibility for it, are not satisfied by our maintaining and furthering its existence as such; they demand that we shall try to raise it to its highest value in every respect. (3)

The first imperative for reverence for life in civilization is to seek to make ethics real at all levels of society. The systems worldview outlined here harmonizes knowledge from many fields, and offers an outline of general concepts which should be a part of the knowledge base of every individual. It makes clear that all knowledge is a part of the humanities. Further, these humanities must not be kept forever separate, each isolated in its own department. It is critical to the development of ethical society that teaching must foster an understanding of the interactive and interlocking nature of knowledge, so that we may comprehend the true nature of nature.

Ethics can be made real. Ethics can be taught, but to gain a wider acceptance of that idea, we must build on Heraclitus’ insight that we must have a “cosmos in common” as a basis for communication and understanding. Only in the workings of life itself can we demonstrate surely and consistently a principle of ethics which creates a conscious imperative, an imperative that is in harmony with our unconscious will-to-live.

The teaching of ethics must also put high value on developing thought and inquiry as a lifestyle. The world of knowledge is rapidly changing, and must continue to do so. Finding the ethical options requires knowledge of all aspects of the situation confronted. Ethics start with good science. (4) As knowledge changes, ethical options change, though of course the principle of life’s balance and of reverence for life does not.

The teaching of ethics must also be prepared to draw supportive parallels with ethical teachings in other systems, such as religious systems. In the work presented here, we have already mentioned many such parallels, drawing from Hebrew, Christian, Oriental, and various primal sources. Reverence for life does indeed support and respect individual belief systems. However, instituting a system of public teaching of ethical principles will require making a distinction between the teaching of ethics and the teaching of religion. There is no sense in which the teaching of ethics constitutes the establishing of a religion. It is entirely appropriate to teach ethics and to draw comparative parallels. Indeed, it must be done.

In a litigious society, it is likely that dissident parents will make legal challenges to any sort of ethical teaching that is not explicitly in the language of their own belief system. Reverence for life respects those who act in that way. The worldview presented here helps understand the psychological dynamics of such protests. However, supported by the body of knowledge presented, society can confidently affirm a policy of teaching principles of ethics based on reverence for life. Society must develop the courage of its life convictions.

Another imperative for reverence for life in society is to seek to make ethics real in public policy. We have made the point that reverence for life is not political and does not presume any particular political agenda. That is true. Political realities change, or over time come to be interpreted differently. Political action must always be subject to careful analysis and subsequent evaluation.

The insights of the universal or systems worldview are especially helpful in dealing with the complexities of multi-level problems. Probabilities of outcomes at all levels must be considered, and actions must be directed toward the balance of the whole society, not toward the self-interest of an apparently isolated segment of society. Indeed, this worldview makes clear that no segment exists in isolation.

The systems worldview also makes clear that environmentalism is not a separate issue which can be isolated from other concerns on the legislative agenda. Actions directed toward the “environment” are directed toward the wrong point of focus. The focus must always be on the interrelatedness of life. All matters on the legislative agenda must be considered in terms of all life system interactions, and in terms of the interactions between life systems and geosystems.

Reverence for life also makes real the relationship between the development and fulfillment of the individual and that of society. The development of a society cannot be achieved without respect for the freedom of the individual. The political concept of human rights derives from the ethical concept of human will-to-live. While reverence for life does not specify the particulars of a government’s constitution or its legislative policies, we can confidently state that this natural life-systems ethic does not support either anarchy or totalitarianism. It supports the “middle way” of balance of all life, seeking always to act in the interests of individuals and society together.

The American experience of replacing the law of the sovereign with the law of the people hinges on a concept of checks and balances. The concept of the natural rights of man derived from an intuitive and empirical understanding of the natural order. Even though the United States Constitution well preceeded modern biological science, the founding fathers established a system which, in its essence, is organic rather than legal, for it is based on life systems principles. “Checks and balances,” after all, is a political scientist’s way of describing the feedback principle. The American system has been successful because it has embodied life principle in its central legal structures, allowing its political and judicial systems to respond organically to the needs of its people. However, we must acknowledge that where it fails to meet societal problems, it does so when rigid political doctrine and fixed legal structure become unresponsive to changing life needs.

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The trend of the recent decades has been to the exaltation of individual freedom and to the denial of collective interactive responsibility. Groups representing the single interests of economic, ethnic, religious, gender, or other constituencies increasingly claim “rights” for increasingly narrowly defined categories of persons, rather than affirming the collective rights of all people as persons. An organically balanced society must recognize that all citizens must learn to participate in the whole by taking equal responsibility as persons, without regard to categories.

Individual human rights can flourish only in a fertile soil which supports collective human rights, for only when the rights of everyone are affirmed may the rights of any one individual be achieved and protected. Nor may the rights of an individual be affirmed without affirming the responsibility of each individual to the rights of all. There is an inherent interaction between right and responsibility.

Since Marx and Lenin, world economic doctrine has been polarized between purist doctrines of capitalism and communism. The dramatically sudden collapse of communist systems in Europe attests that individual freedom and initiative may not be forfeited to central planning, nor may freedom of expression and worship forever be systematically denied if a human system is to survive. In the wake of that demonstration, many are declaiming the ultimate “victory” of capitalism.

In the United States, the two poles of economic and political opinion are set closer together than on the world scale. In general, these positions cluster around the flags of the two major political parties, one “standard bearer” emphasizing public sector solutions, and the other, private sector initiative. Too often, however, these flags are marched forward by communities of fixed doctrine in the service of partisan power, rather than in organic response to the needs of the people.

The collapse of European communism and of the cold war brings us to a major crossroads of world order. However, the increasing problems of American society underscore that we must also rethink our domestic order, and revive our understanding of free society as organic society. The polarizations and the alienations which have threatened to overcome us at all levels, economic and environmental, urban and rural, social and individual, must be broken down and overcome, being reconciled by a new grasp of an ancient worldview of wholeness.

At the very least, an organic view of society requires that its people be adequately provided with nutrition, housing, education and medical care. We usually construe these as individual human needs or “rights”. The organic view of society points to these as societal needs as well. The society is not healthy if its people are not healthy. When people are not adequately provided for, the system becomes unstable and its survival is threatened. Since there are both individual and social dimensions to providing these basics, we cannot solve the problems through doctrines which place individual needs in opposition to collective needs.

The world is now too complex to be served by the simplistically rigid political and economic doctrines of the past. Our headiness at seeing the success of our system as victorious over communism must not lead us to blindly pursue unfettered unregulated capitalism. Strong and vigorous and successful as our system is, capital must serve people, not vice versa.

We do well to consider the organic view, that systems are self-regulating only within a certain range of conditions. External “treatments” must be offered to promote healing of the system when normal tolerances are exceeded. In the economic sphere, concentrations of capital become concentrations of power, which, like the complex of psychologic theory, tends toward autonomy. Like a cancer, such a complex subsumes more and more energy into its own control, weakening the function of the whole.

There are many implications for modern society of the organic view of life. Though this is not the place for a full study of an organic theory of government, it is appropriate to comment briefly. As populations increase and economic and technologic complexity increase, the role of government must be reconsidered.

An organic view leads to the conclusion that both private and public sectors must be strong. There will always tension between them, but they must always be responsive to each other. Just as there is a balance of power among the arms of government, so must there be a balance between the representative government and its people.

The private sector must be the economic engine. In system terms, it must be both energy generator and processor, but energy alone does not make a system. There must be an integrating regulating function which operates in service of the whole. That is the role properly served by government, but it is effective and integrating only when the bureaucracies do not themselves become autonomous complexes unresponsive to the needs of the whole organism.

We face a complicated future, which requires us to adhere to a new way of thinking about life at all levels. Whether the organism is the nation-state in its internal affairs, or the global community of nation-states, neither can operate as a healthy organism unless we honor the natural ethic of reverence for life.

In Philosophy of Civilization, Schweitzer included a chapter entitled “The civilizing power of reverence for life.” There, it is clear that he had a great and confident vision for the applicability of ethical principles at national and international levels. Ethics must be central to any concept of new world order.

The objection is raised that, according to all experience, the state cannot exist by relying merely on truth, justice, and ethical considerations, but in the last resort has to take refuge in opportunism. … It is refuted by the dreary results. We have therefore the right to declare the opposite course to be true wisdom, and to say that true power for the state as for the individual is to be found in spirituality and ethical conduct. The state lives by the confidence of those who belong to it; it lives by the confidence felt in it by other states. Opportunist policy may have temporary successes to record, but in the long run it assuredly ends in failure.

Thus ethical world- and life-affirmation demands of the modern state that it shall aspire to making itself an ethical and spiritual personality. It presses this obstinately upon the state … . The wisdom of tomorrow has a different tone from that of yesterday. (5)

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Ethics and New World Order

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1)  “ALL THINGS ARE NOURISHED TOGETHER” — ” The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean”. Portable World Bible.  R. O. Ballou, editor. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. p 514.

(2) SURVIVAL OF THE FIT — Theodosius Dobzhanzky. Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. p 133.

(3) “IN NO WAY DOES REVERENCE FOR LIFE” — Schweitzer. PC, p 330.

(4) ETHICS, GOOD SCIENCE — It is of course also obvious that good science must be based on “good ethics”. Experiments improperly done and information falsified do not yield “science”.

(5) “THE OBJECTION IS RAISED” — Schweitzer. PC, p 342 f.

 

This is the twenty second Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic 18) The Ethical Field  19) MetaEthics 20) Comparative Ethics  21) The Ethical Model

Ethics and the Individual

Donivan Bessinger, MD

This outline of a system of natural ethics is now complete. There is indeed a natural ethic which is found empirically in the unconscious workings of nature toward balance. It is a system without cultural or religious bias, for it is a system which values all life, and which is based in our universal experience of life.

Further, it is a system which can be brought into consciousness as a basis for ethical thought, teaching, and practice in a complicated world. As promised, the presentation is a primer, designed around teaching models which outline and point toward interpretations of the body of knowledge which can serve to help restore balance. Only through teaching can we be brought to express in the conscious world the balance that is self-regulating in the unconscious world.

The system incorporates Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence for life. In his preface to the English edition (1923), Schweitzer projected four volumes for his Philosophy of Civilization. Of these, only two were published: The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. The third volume, which existed in manuscript form but which has not been published, was entitled “The World View of Reverence for Life.” The fourth volume was to deal with the civilized state. (1)

In his first volume, Schweitzer reviewed philosophy’s (reductive) knowledge base and found it wanting, on the grounds that it lacked a valid basis for a universal principle of ethics. He objected to the attempt to found ethics on the existing worldview and proposed to shape his new worldview according to the insight of his philosophy.

Our approach sixty-eight years later has been different. We now have at hand the evidence necessary to draw a non-reductive worldview based on the interactions and systems wholeness of the universe, and we find the homeostatic principle to be operating at multiple levels. That both approaches bring us to a similar conclusion gives strong support to the validity of the principle of reverence for life.

Only the few people who may have read the manuscript of Schweitzer’s third volume are in a position to know how he painted his worldview. Despite the differences in approach and the extraordinary expansion of knowledge since he completed Volume Two, I suspect that we would be able to find many points of agreement between this approach and his. Both approaches are valid, for one’s philosophy does influence the way one looks at the world, and the way one responds to it. Respecting life draws one to recognize life’s interactions; acknowledging life’s interactions draws one to respect all life.

Yet despite our settling upon (and in effect, merging) the systems worldview and the principle of reverence for life as natural ethic, there remains the problem of demonstrating that it can make a difference. The question still smoulders in the minds of ordinary people: Why ethics? Why bother?

Why, especially at the individual level? Does not ethics deal with social interactions? At least the benefits to society are more obvious. Of what “use” are ethics to the individual?

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First, the natural systems view of ethics finds that achieving the good of homeostasis requires freedom of action. For example, the internal sensors of a system’s internal environment and its communications (feedback) system that transmits the responses must operate freely and accurately if homeostatic adjustments are to occur. Barriers which prevent proper sensing of internal environment, or barriers which prevent proper transmission of responses block homeostatic adjustments. Certainly that is evident in social systems, but it is just as true in a person’s own self.

There are many barriers which individuals and societies erect which tend to block this freedom of internal adjustment for wholeness, or “individuation,” to use Jung’s term. Teachings within the culture and peer pressures of various kinds may impose barriers to appraisal and acceptance of certain feelings, sexual ones for example, reinforcing the energy of a person’s shadow rather than permitting and encouraging appropriate responses for a balanced personality.

We have already referred to the problems of racial and religious bias. There, a person, usually in response to ideas fostered within a particular subculture or isolated belief system, erects internal barriers which prevent sensing and responding to the needs of others. Thus they block the basic ethical response, while at the same time reinforcing the psyche’s shadow energy, which in turn sustains or increases the tensions within both individual and global systems.

These responses, which are pathologic from the point of view of both personal and societal health, prevent or retard personal fulfillment. Certainly it is obvious that gaining freedom through the breaking down of political barriers (such as obstructions to human rights) is important for the sake of an ethical society. The personal freedom that comes from breaking down internal barriers is just as important for the sake of personal development. The benefit to a person of natural systems ethics is a barrier-free self.

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The natural systems view of ethics also finds that there must be a certain latitude of tolerance. In normal physiology, one does not find absolutely constant values for any measurement. Homeostasis holds values within a certain “normal” range, but the values may vary freely over a range of tolerances. They may vary widely, for example, when the organism changes from rest to intense exercise. Yet within that range of tolerances, normal mechanisms can respond appropriately and health is maintained.

Similarly, an individual must be prepared ethically to tolerate a range of ideas and practices in others, realizing that such freedom gives expression to one’s own opportunities for development of individuality. Obviously, the system of natural ethics also defines limits to tolerance. Actions which infringe the freedom or safety of oneself or others are unbalancing within the system, and are thus unethical.

Individualism always must find its balance between opportunity and responsibility within the operation of the whole. However, in the system of natural ethics, intolerance is always directed toward unethical behavior, not toward persons. Ethics demands that responses to unethical persons must be tailored to restore that person to ethical awareness, and to avoid their alienation from the system of ethical response.

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The natural systems view of ethics also removes barriers to religious understanding. By harmonizing science and human spirituality, the systems worldview opens the way for a person to respond both to the natural impulses of consciousness for inquiry and for knowledge (the scientific function), and to the impulses of the unconscious for personal fulfillment and for symbolic expression of unity with creation (the religious function).

The basic religious function is a universally present human function, though it may be repressed under the influence of belief systems derived in consciousness. In that case, the belief system may be denied and called “science,” but it functions to relate the person to creation nonetheless. Further, it functions symbolically, perhaps using such symbols of science as equations and models.

We have followed Jung’s development of the significance of the collective unconscious in understanding religious experience. The natural systems ethic draws us toward “thinking sincerely” about the wholeness of ourselves within the wholeness of creation. In that process, despite the many different symbol systems which human cultures have developed through the centuries, we are drawn to a common understanding as well as toward the revitalization and reaffirmation of the truths represented in our own cherished symbols. We are drawn toward reawakening to the meaning of our involvement in all life around us.

Does not such a broad concern for all life lead inevitably to frustration? We cannot possibly provide for the needs of all life. There is, of course, a limit to our individual “reach.” As mentioned in the discussion of the ethical field, there is a certain “friction” that limits the effects of our actions. Reverence for life calls for concern for all life, but imposes no guilt for unsolved problems that are beyond our reach. However, this natural ethic and its systems worldview also reveal that through combined awareness and cooperative forces, reach can be extended potentially to bring all of the globe into the reach of ethics.

This system of ethics also supports a broader understanding of the multiple levels of experience which confront the individual in daily life. All of us must deal concurrently with experience of our inner selves, with the immediate family group, work group, and larger society, all the while confronted with global uncertainties over which we feel little control. The natural ethic reveals that all of these levels are inter-related, and that even where we do not perceive control, we have influence.

A rules-based concept of ethics exalts a “pure” or perfected state, and leaves us faced with continual frustration about the inability to be perfect, or preoccupied with the failures of all the less-than-perfect souls around us. A pure ethic of that sort leads either to an adversarial worldview, and ultimately to confrontation, or to a denial of involvement and to withdrawal.

By contrast, the natural ethic is not frustrated by lack of absolute ethical behavior. It does not have to cope with everyday tension between “pure” and situational responses, and seeks instead to respond toward balance and survival at whatever level action is necessary. Sometimes, balance and survival require actions which in the larger or more ideal situation would be undesirable. The natural ethic realizes that faced with the aggression and hostility of others, survival action is necessary.

Well then, is the natural ethic merely a survival ethic, an ethic of survival at all costs, whatever the result for other life?

No, the natural ethic calls for action that is only sufficient to serve the needs of life. Reverence for life determines that I must avoid all unnecessary injury to other life, but faced with the realities of my own survival, I must kill to eat. Faced with aggression of others, I must respond to insure my own survival. However, reverence for life leads me to seek the alternatives which contain the aggression with the least possible injury to the aggressor and to other life, without responding in revenge.

Is reverence for life then a pacifist philosophy?

No. A situation may indeed require even war, if all other attempts at healing have been exhausted, and there is no alternative for survival and for restoring the balance of life. Surely the world’s experience of Hitler makes that clear. Reverence for life is prepared to do what life requires it to do, but always with a view toward the balance and welfare of the whole of life, and always with regret when any injury results.

Perhaps, then, there are different tiers or levels of ethical standards, excusing actions at one level that are proscribed at another level?

No, the one ethical standard is to serve the balance of life on all levels. One must not become preoccupied with executing a certain plan or project. One must remain preoccupied with the balance of the whole. Even as a member of a board or some other form of governing assembly, a person must act individually with reverence for life, and seek to direct collective actions toward ethical outcomes, concerned with means as well as ends.

If the system of natural ethics confers the obvious benefits of improved understanding, it also imposes some definite responsibilities. The practice of ethics requires knowledge of the situation in which one is acting, and knowledge and skill in applying means. In that sense, “good ethics” begins with good science.

Ethics also requires effort to seek to “know oneself,” and to develop awareness of the interactions of the forces within ourselves with the world around us. “Thinking sincerely,” as Schweitzer put it, is thinking toward increased awareness of relationships in life.

Awareness of the relationship between sincerity and ethics, however, is not unique to Schweitzer. The Confucian Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean places great emphasis on the principle of sincerity, and in so doing, sums up the individual’s necessary response.

Sincerity is the way of heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men. He who possesses sincerity is he who, without an effort, hits what is right, and apprehends without the exercise of thought … he is the sage who naturally and easily embodies the right way. He who attains to sincerity is he who chooses what is good, and firmly holds it fast.

To this attainment there are requisite the extensive study of what is good, accurate inquiry about it, careful reflection on it, the clear discrimination of it, and the earnest practice of it. (2)

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Ethics and Society

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1)  “THE WORLD VIEW OF REVERENCE FOR LIFE” — Norman Cousins describes efforts to bring the third volume to publication. op. cit. (17).

(2) “SINCERITY IS THE WAY OF HEAVEN” — “The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean”. Portable World Bible, R. O. Ballou, editor. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. p 513.

 

This is the twenty first Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic 18) The Ethical Field  19) MetaEthics 20) Comparative Ethics

The Ethical Model

Donivan Bessinger, MD

So far, we have established at least this point: ethics is not easy. Ethics is complex, so much so that we have organized our thinking around a series of models which can be useful both in teaching ethical concepts, and in analyzing ethical issues in real-life situations. Our study is almost complete, but before proceeding, we should review the major points so far.

First, our worldview is a universal or systems worldview, that harmonizes current knowledge about the external material reality with the reality of internal human psychological (“spiritual”) functioning. A science that denies human spirituality is incomplete and incorrect. So is a religious or psychological system that seeks to deny science. There is of course a conflict between science and certain religious ideas. However, the concept that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between science and religion is unacceptable both to true science and to true religion, for truth too is an interactive unity. (1)

Our survey of the universe as system has yielded these “life-lessons” as particularly useful in ethical thinking:

1. The universe is an interactive wholeness, a system.
2. Life is ordered toward survival, and has needs which must be met.
3. An organism must interact with its environment in a functional niche.
4. Life is ordered toward balance, not perfection.
5. Life systems change (evolve).
6. Individual life is limited.
7. Masculine and feminine functions are equally important to survival.
8. Human survival requires the orderly functioning of consciousness, in support of the operation of unconscious survival mechanisms.

Second, the “ethical system” is not so much an organized body of knowledge about ethics as it is a recognition of interactive elements normally operating in a balanced and ordered universe. Thus, much of ethical teaching may be reduced to functional models that express operating inter-relationships. As such, the models are not the reality, but are thought constructions that are designed to operate in a manner analogous to reality. In this work and its companion volume, we have presented the following models as particularly useful in understanding ethical thinking.

1. A comprehensive worldview can be modeled as a complex lens with differing colors in many axes of vision, varying according to many individual factors, both internal and external.

2. Systems theory itself models the multi-level realities seen in the operation of the universe.

3. The dynamics of the total human psyche may be modeled as a living unicellular organism.

4. An understanding of homeostatic balance for survival yields a model of ethics vs. evil, in which the Good is the optimum balance of a self-regulating system, and ethics and evil describe movements toward and away from the Good.

5. A consideration of the many forces impinging on and shaping all actions yields a model of ethical “field theory.” That also helps express an ethical “uncertainty principle”: In the complexity of the field, there is always uncertainty as to which rule to apply, and as to outcome. Ethical decisions must be individually analyzed for each situation.

6. Ethical thinking requires multi-level thinking. There are multiple levels at the object level (the issue or problem that is the object of the decision and action). There are also multiple levels to the analysis which must be applied. These concepts are incorporated into the metaethics “model.”

Third, the metaethical postulates (statements) are presented as concepts that are important to ethical systems theory. But they are more than a mere list of statements. As a functional description of ethical process, they may also be understood as a dynamic functional model.

All of the statements apply to the whole enterprise of making correct decisions. However, some deal with general attitudes and concerns which are especially prominent at the start, or input phase, of the decision process. Others apply especially to the middle or processor phase, while the remainder characterize the result or output phase of the process.

Grouping the statements in this way helps illustrate that ethical decision-making is an orderly, systems-oriented process, subject to analysis. It is a process summarized in this unlikely mnemonic, made from the key word in each statement: RND GLO DIRT, or “RouND GLObe of DIRT.”

INPUT phase: Proceed in awareness of —

R – Reverence for life
N - life Needs
D - life Development

PROCESS phase: Consider —

G - Global effects
L - Local level
O - Outcome, probability

OUTPUT phase: Result must conserve –

D - Diversity
I - Individuality
R - Responsibility
T - Thought, knowledge

[ Review: Metaethical postulates ]

In developing the metaethical statements there was no thought at all that they would or should make any sort of acronym or mnemonic. It is only now, while seeking a teaching device to summarize the ethical process, that a mnemonic based on key words first becomes apparent. Certainly, if a catchy phrase were our objective, we would have come up with something less demeaning than a reference to “dirt”! After all, should not ethics be a noble pursuit of lofty celestial concepts, designed to raise humble mankind to perfection?

No. That view, I think, is a primary reason for the inadequacy of much ethical thinking. The view of an ethics of some sort of celestial perfection or moral absolutism makes ethics an unreachable goal and an impracticable pursuit. By contrast, this presentation has sought to derive an ethic which is attainable. It is an ethic derived and practiced at the human level. This ethic is literally grounded in the dirt on which we live — this globe. Thus the mnemonic is entirely appropriate, for it speaks of the earth of our very existence. It is an ethic grounded in the humus of humanity itself. Is it not interesting and significant that the words humus, human, and humility share the same root?

The systems ethic does not reach for a remote and unattainable sinless goodness. Yet there is a sense in which the natural ethic reaches for perfection. It seeks the perfection of the good of homeostasis, the healthy balance of all life. It finds in the teaching “Be perfect as your Father [the Creator] is perfect” the meaning that we should seek in our own lives the perfect harmony of creation. (2) That interpretation also parallels the insights of various Eastern religions. Ethics seek perfect wholeness of life for the individual as well as for society.

Is there then one final model which summarizes and illustrates the ethical imperative? We turn again to our understanding of life systems, to look at the wholeness of the unicellular organism. In such a cell, all that is contained within the cell serves the purposes of the genetic programs of the nucleus, which guide not only the reproduction of the organism but also the processes of metabolism. Because of this genetic autonomy, we may consider all activities of the cell to be organized around the nucleus. In responding to the control of the nucleus, all processes of the cell function to sustain the “wholeness” of the organism.

Also, we used such an organism to model the psyche according to Jung’s theory. There, the nuclear Self seeks to guide the whole organism by coordinating the work of the Ego (consciousness) with the work of the other complexes or energy-structures in the psyche and thus maintain a balance. In both models, the problem is to support and sustain the object at the center, and in so doing, support and sustain the whole.

The basic ethical problem of any given situation, simple or complex, can be expressed as the problem of how correctly to deal with, or serve the requirements of, some object at the center of attention, while simultaneously sustaining the wholeness of the system. The unicellular organism also serves as a helpful model here. Using that as a model, we may now restate the ethical problem as follows:

Ethical action visualizes the object of concern as being at the center or nucleus of the local ethical system; the actors positioned around the nuclear object, respond to support the function of the whole as a system.

The object of concern may be an individual, as it is in medical practice. The object could also be a thought-object, such as a public works plan or political action plan. In either case, the object is an entity that has an identifiable integrity that gives it a certain autonomy, and which (potentially) influences the whole.

In an ethical model of a medical practice situation, the physicians, other care-givers, and family members represent the organelles or other non-nuclear structures of the cell, which serve the requirements of the autonomous patient. In modeling the ethical considerations of some public plan of action, the organelles may be said to represent all life forms affected by the plan in any way.

The local ethical system is represented by the whole cell. The cell model must be drawn sufficiently large to represent the entire reach of influences in the particular situation. It must represent the whole environment in which the homeostasis of the system operates. The model illustrates that the organelles (“actors”) and the nucleus (“object”) are all parts of an interactive whole.

The ethical field of forces is represented by the cytoplasm of the cell, within which are dissolved both the nutrients and the poisons of the system. Providing the former and eliminating the latter are both matters of concern in the ethical model.

The whole of the system supported by the actors, must of course be taken to include both the object and the actors. Further, as the ethical actor, I relate to the nuclear object. If that object is a person, I relate to the whole self of that person, but I am not bound to the caprices of that person’s own ego. In acting to serve, I must respect the conscious wishes (autonomy) of that person, but I am also obligated to respect my own knowledge and judgement. In serving that object ethically, I do not become subservient.

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[ Review: Metaethical postulates ]

Related Exhibits from Religion Confronting Science:

[ Generic systems diagram ] , [ Jung's model of the psyche ] , [ Symbols, Garden of Eden ] , [ Ethics models ]

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Developing the analogy between this ethical model and the model of the psyche provides some additional insight. In my psyche, there is an ego-self relationship of conscious will with the unconscious regulators of homeostasis. From the standpoint of my internal ethics, the actions of my conscious I must be consistent with the needs of my nuclear self to maintain my homeostatic balance. Similarly, I may model my dealings with others by putting them at the nuclear self position. In this interpretation of the model, my conscious ego serves as though the other person were my own self.

Thus, the ethical model becomes an elaboration of the golden rule. Encumbered as it is with terms and concepts from physiology and psychology, this “modern” ethical model has found no more basic insight than the ethical teachings of antiquity, grounded in an understanding of the balance of nature. The ethics of systems homeostasis is in fact no more modern than Confucius or Aristotle.

Earlier, we referred to Aristotle’s concept of regulation to a Golden Mean, and to the Confucianist writing The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean or Middle Way, which pairs the concept of “correct course” with that of the “regulating principle.” There, the teacher builds ethics on the natural principle of balance, and develops a “principle of reciprocity” or Golden Rule of ethics.

What heaven has conferred is called the nature; and accordance with this nature is the Path of Duty …

The Master said, This path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered the path. When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others. (3)

In orthodox Christian theology, the ethical teachings of Jesus, as divinely revealed law, are often interpreted as strict rules. Yet in Jesus’ teachings too, one finds considerable awareness of correlations between the balance of nature and the balance of personal life, (4) and emphasis on salvation or wholeness found through following his “Way” (5) to the “kingdom of heaven within.” (6) All of one’s being is to live in harmony with the Creator and creation, and that principle superceedes the strictly interpreted traditional law:

So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. (7)

Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. (8)

The principle of the golden rule also operates in Kant’s formulation of the “categorical imperative.” Any proposed action is tested by this question: Would it be just as acceptable to me if others always acted toward me in the way I am about to act toward them?

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness in order to discern what I have to do in order that my volition may be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for all its contingencies, I ask myself only: Can I will that my maxim become a universal law? (9)

In his Philosophy of Civilization, Schweitzer also directly derives the golden rule from our awareness of our own existence in relation to the existence of others. We have already quoted the passage:

Ethics consist, therefore, in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do to my own. (10)

Though our inquiry into a natural ethic started with a deep and broad concept of the systems-order of the universe based on modern knowledge, we have been led to affirm mankind’s earliest ethical teachings. Moreover, we are affirmed in the position that ethics is a matter of attitude, not of law. Ethics consists in seeking the ethical attitude or insight that is higher than the law, and that sums the law. Law must be subservient to ethics, not vice versa.

Here then is the ethical model which is the prescription for an optimistic worldview for survival. Though it is derived in full consciousness of human spirituality, it is not presented as religious. Though it is derived from a broad base of knowledge, it is not presented as scientific. It is presented as an affirmation of life, that must undergird all action. The prescription for healing and survival is the ethics of life.

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Ethics and the Individual

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION — See preface to Religion Confronting Science

(2) “BE PERFECT” — Matthew 5: 48, King James Version.

(3) “WHAT HEAVEN HAS CONFERRED” — Confucianist writing “The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean”.  See The Portable World Bible, R. O. Ballou, editor. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. pp 510-511.

(4) JESUS’ AWARENESS OF NATURE — For example, the “lilies of the field” passage. Matthew 6: 28. See also Religion Confronting Science, World as System

(5) JESUS’ “WAY” — John 14: 6

(6) “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN WITHIN” — Luke 17: 21. See also 4:2 and 10:16.

(7) “SO WHATEVER YOU WISH” — Matthew 7: 12. RSV.

(8) “TEACHER, WHICH IS THE GREAT” — Matthew 22: 36-40. RSV.

(9) “I DO NOT, THEREFORE, NEED” — Immanuel Kant. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, First Section. In the section following, Kant gives the law an unequivocally organic interpretation: “Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal Law of Nature”. He illustrates that by imagining a man so depressed as to ask “whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life.” Kant:

“His maxim is: From self-love, I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction … Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the principle of all duty.”

(10) “ETHICS CONSIST, THEREFORE” — Schweitzer. PC, p 309.

 

This is the twentieth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic 18) The Ethical Field  19) MetaEthics

Comparative Ethics

Donivan Bessinger, MD

The enterprise of making correct decisions is confounded by the profound changes that are taking place in civilization at large. All of the forces of the ethical field are intensifying rapidly, as evidenced by extraordinary growth in scientific information, technologic capability, entanglements of law, and complexity of the socioeconomic order, the last compounded by ethnologic diversity and philosophic heterogeneity.

The philosophic heterogeneity is a special challenge to consensus on ethical issues. The history of philosophy gives quite a shopping list of concepts intended to govern right action. These concepts have their own hierarchy, and have been variously taught as theories, principles, and rules of conduct.

Any concept claiming the attention of decision makers must compete vigorously and strongly in a diverse marketplace of ideas. A natural ethic is no exception, even when (especially when) it claims the distinction of being based in a “new” world view. Even the claim to being based in a worldview seems strange in today’s market, for today’s metaphysical and positivist ethical systems seem to define their worldview according to their philosophy, not vice versa.

Advocating ethics according to natural principles is by no means a new enterprise. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) gave the classical ball a new push in the days of the infancy of the natural sciences. There was a Stoical echo in his view of a universe dominated by a rational law of nature, as well as a modern humanist element in his arguments for an ethics based on a universal view of man. Now a twentieth century systems ethic, based on a universal view of all life, must undergo comparison with other ethical arguments.

As a natural attitudinal ethic, systems ethics provides both a theory of ethics (a system of thought by which ethics is described) and a principle (an irreducible — i.e. fundamental — premise which governs ethical action). By contrast, our meta-ethical postulates are neither. They are derived from the one principle of respect for life seeking its balance, and they define the application of the principle to decision-making.

Keeping that in mind, it will be instructive to consider how these postulates or statements relate to other systems of ethical thought. The scope of the work permits only a bare outline of topics worthy of further investigation.

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First, we consider various ethical theories. (1)

(a) Axiology

Axiology (from the Greek axios, meaning that which is worthy) is the study of value systems. Valuing is an operation of consciousness, and consciousness determines rather capriciously where it places its value, defining it in such subjective terms as pleasure (hedonism), happiness (Aristotle for example), beauty (idealism), denial (Schopenhauer), etc.

As we have discussed, classical ethics begins by defining the ultimate value — the good. Our modern systems worldview provides the understanding that the natural good is that toward which life is ordered, that is, homeostatic balance for survival and development. The good values will-to-live, and arising from awareness of will-to-live, reverence for life values life. Under the influence of reverence for life, consciousness derives its secondary values consistent with life’s needs.

(b) Deontology

Deontology (from the Greek stem deont-, referring to that which is binding) deals with duty. Deontology was the title of a book by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) which held that one has the duty to serve “the greatest good (or greatest happiness) for the greatest number.” That theory is most widely known today as utilitarianism, and is primarily concerned with the ends, or consequences, of actions.

Kant is associated with “rules-based” deontology, in which one’s moral duty lies in applying correct motives in following moral rules. The morality is in the means, and an action may be seen as moral even if the consequences are unpredicted and unfortunate. There is a correlation between Kant’s “categorical imperative” and the “Think globally, act locally” formula. Kant directs that one must act (locally) in the way that one could will would become a general (global) law of nature.

The systems ethic is concerned with both the means and ends of actions. As we have emphasized, it does not lend itself to reduction to rules. Where rules or laws are required, they ought to be devised in accordance with reverence for life, in consideration of maintaining life’s balance.

The systems ethic affirms that the greatest good for the greatest number comes in serving life’s needs for balance. The metaethical statements define the considerations which must be answered in both the means and the ends of action. Life is considered in both individual and collective dimensions. Life needs are defined by the life process itself, rather than by any sort of majority concept of happiness.

(c) Teleology

Teleology (from Greek tele, end) is the doctrine that design and purpose are apparent in nature. Teleological ethics is ethics concerned with fulfilling natural purpose, or in particular, with fulfilling one’s own humanity. Such an argument focuses on ends rather than means, and leaves action open to arguments of “ends justifying means.”

The systems ethic is also concerned with fulfillment and development, but it is also concerned with means, for it is concerned with all life, and means influence life.

(d) Casuistry

Casuistry is concerned with cases, and seeks (often disingenuously) to find and answer legal and moral subtleties in specific ethical situations. While law and precedent must be acknowledged, they are not sufficient guidance for ethical practice, in a medical context or any other. Reverence for life, in its attitudinal approach to right action, and the systems worldview, in its understanding of the homeostatic dynamics of life systems, stand in sharp contrast to the legalistic instincts of casuistry.

(e) Contextuality

Contextuality theories of ethical practice are concerned with analysis of given situations, with a particular emphasis on the human interactions inherent in the situation. They seek to correctly apply the values and principles of the group and the individuals involved to seek a consensus on right action, and they are concerned with interactions. However, the context (situation) itself generates no ethical principle for guidance.

The ethical field theory discussed earlier is a presentation of the larger context that encompasses decision-makers. As we remarked there, the forces in the field are not themselves forces that tend toward ethics. A defining principle must be brought to the context of the decision-making, if right action is to be achieved.

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Next we consider four commonly stated principles by which actions often are judged: autonomy, beneficience, non-maleficience, and justice. The only shortcoming of these four concepts is that the principle on which they are based is not defined. As we asked before, What more basic principle brings us to these? What principle governs their application in decision making? They are not sufficiently fundamental to be considered the basis for a system of ethics and metaethics. These too operate at the metaethical level, in that they suggest the way decisions are to be applied to real situations.

(a) Autonomy

Autonomy is the concept that an individual human has the right of self-determination in matters affecting the individual’s own person. Considerations of the right of privacy and the obligation to obtain informed consent to actions involving another person derive from the concept of autonomy. However, autonomy of the human person is not a self-evident proposition, and must derive from some other principle.

Reverence for life supports the concept of autonomy, for it values all life, seeks to meet all life needs (including the need for integrity and freedom for personal development), and seeks to conserve individuality and to conserve responsibility and thought. Reverence for life engenders respect for all other individuals and enriches the concept of “person.” Reverence for life influences all relationships.

The attitude of reverence for life toward other persons is informed by the systems worldview. That view, in its understanding of psyche, sees other persons not in terms of mask (persona) and ego, but in terms of the self and its potential for balance (good).

(b) Beneficence

Beneficence is the concept that actions must seek benefit to the people affected, or in our broader context, to any life affected. Benefit is commonly assessed in terms of a “cost-benefit ratio,” and is thus, in its broadest sense, an economic argument. As such, it properly belongs as much to “field theory” as to metaethics.

Like autonomy, benefit is not self-evident. Benefit must be assessed in some subjective term of valuation. Increasingly, benefit is evaluated directly in monetary terms as concerns about scarce resources become factored into ethical decisions at all levels, medical and otherwise.

By contrast, reverence for life finds benefit in respecting, promoting, and serving life needs. Benefit is not defined in terms of monetary gain (though that may occur in the process) or in terms of statistical indices (though they may be helpful in determining trends). Benefit is apparent in the survival and in the development and fulfillment of all life, individually and collectively.

In accordance with autonomy, the people affected by the decision must participate in defining benefit. However, the benefit defined by an individual must be consistent with needs of other life. A definition of individual benefit that fails the metaethical tests must be considered misguided and invalid.

(c) Non-maleficence

Primum non nocere: First and foremost, do no harm. The concept of non-maleficence is that ancient guiding rule of ethics, the rule of avoiding injury. It is an idea that is readily understood and has great appeal. On close examination, however, one can not find in the statement itself its principle of origin, or any guidance for defining harm. As is true for benefit, each defines harm in one’s own way, according to context.

Even pain, which seems a harm that we all want to avoid for ourselves, may be instead a benefit which serves the restoration of health. Like benefit, harm must be defined in terms of some more fundamental concept.

In reverence for life, benefit is found in that which supports and encourages will-to-live. Harm lies in the “deprecation of the will-to-live,” as Schweitzer put it. By focusing on the needs and development of all life, the natural ethic provides guidance in defining benefit and harm alike.

(d) Justice

Justice is an elusive concept, heavily laden with considerations of value. To be just is to be guided by the principles of truth, reason, fairness, morality, equality, et cetera. Achieving justice requires building on a base of knowledge and ethics. Justice is an unlimited good, in that a society may not have too much of it, but is not itself a principle which can define ethics.

A study of the natural world yields no basis for a doctrine of natural fairness. Volcanoes and tornadoes do not exert their influences equally. Events seem driven by a randomness in which misfortune strikes good people and bad, strong people and weak. There is a natural distribution of abilities and disabilities, so that life must be interpreted, not as unfair, but as neutral. Life is fair only in that we are all at risk for misfortune.

However, though we are not equal in abilities or gains, we are equal in respect to will-to-live. Each, regardless of race, creed, color, education, etc., is equally endowed with the homeostatic impulse toward survival. It is that basic impulse that defines life, and that provides the basis for reverence for life. Reverence for life seeks to provide for the needs and development of all life. Justice lies in acting in universal respect for will-to-live.

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A review of articles about ethics, particularly medical ethics, reveals a variety of other arguments that are put forward in attempting to define right action. These may provide guidance in many situations, but on analysis, none is a self-evident, self-sufficient fundamental on which to base an ethical system.

(a) Service

An argument appealing to a concept of service is an appeal to altruism, which as have discussed, is always interactive with egoism. Service is an ideal, derived from considerations of mutual benefit. An impulse for service emerges from the attitude of reverence for life. Schweitzer:

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. (2)

(b) Quality of life

Of all the arguments, “quality of life” is the most fraught with subjectivity. Certainly, quality of life is a concept which one may apply to one’s own thinking about one’s own life decisions, but it is not a judgment which most of us would want someone else, particularly a stranger, to make for us. Each person values different qualities in life in different measure. None of us can decide for someone else what is to be valued and what is not.

Even life lived within the agonizing and feared limitations of quadriplegia is not without all meaning, for such patients still contribute to the no”sphere by thinking and communicating. Many operate computers, have published books, and have created works of art. For example, the contribution of Stephen Hawking in physics is incalculable. “Who among us knows what significance any other kind of life has in itself?” (3)

(c) Boundary of the human

David “the Bubble Boy” was a congenitally immune-deficient child who was treated from infancy in a plastic isolation chamber. A chaplain concerned about the severe limitations of his life writes that as David grew older, he complained that he “had been put into a cage and treated like a wild animal.” Later, when dying out of the chamber, the patient asked whether there had been any meaning to his life.

Rev. Lawrence writes that such highly technologic isolated treatment “is only dimly aware of the subtle and delicate boundaries of the human.” Further, “If we do not attempt to clarify soon what makes human life human, we may see even more monstrous dehumanizations than those experienced by David.” (4)

Thus the concept of a boundary of the human seems to be a variation of the concept of quality of life. Reverence for life is concerned with life needs, development, individuality, ethical outcomes, responsibility, and thought. It is concerned with all life. Each life decision is difficult, and each decision must be continuously reevaluated. Each such decision is guided by respect for life in full acceptance of life’s limitations and medicine’s limitations.

Reverence for life does indeed support a concept of avoiding dehumanization. However, it does not define when a human is a human. It does not support deciding which of two human lives is the more human, or when a human is not a human any more.

(d) Covenant

The covenant or contract argument is an argument for defining the relationship between a provider of services and a client, or in medicine, between the doctor and patient. As such, it is an argument based on such concepts as service, autonomy, and beneficience.

Veatch has pointed out that because of society’s interest in the relationship, it is really a “triple contract.” As such it is a contextual concept of ethics. Like reverence for life, it is concerned with interactions. However, reverence for life finds its covenant at the level of existence, in the mutual involvement of the parties in will-to-live, not at the societal level. (5)

(e) Sanctity of life

At the superficial level, the term sanctity of life approaches very closely the idea of reverence for life. Yet, on analysis, there are significant differences. Sanctity refers to holiness, saintliness, godliness, or sacred or hallowed character. The concept of holiness is a concept of wholeness, and in that sense it comes closest. However, the other terms relate to theological arguments rather than philosophical ones. Of course, theological and philosophical arguments may coincide, making distinctions more of labeling than of substance.

The systems ethic does not originate in a concept of divinity, but it is not in conflict with the view that the universe is created by and contingent on a divine creator. In modern political usage, the term sanctity of life often defines a slogan of a particular political movement. Reverence for life is not a political theory. It seeks to be implemented in the lives of individuals and groups, but it does not presume any particular political agenda.

(f) Humanism

An ethic based on humanism is an ethic that seeks its authority in a consensus of shared values, especially such values as justice and compassion. Humanism views mankind as set off from other life, and aspires to the fullest development of human potential. The systems ethic, which we equate with reverence for life, does not derive from a concept of humanism, but it affirms humanism in its fullest meaning.

Those who politically affirm sanctity of life often also rail against “humanistic philosophies,” especially “secular humanism.” If “secular humanism” refers to humanitarian sentiments derived on philosophical rather than theological grounds, then the systems ethic is both secular and humanistic. However, if secular humanism is understood as an egoistic humanism, denying the validity and depth of human spirituality, one should object to it.

The systems ethic supports a “true” humanism, in which the fullness of human aspirations and potential are realized in the context of, and in consideration of, all life.

(g) Human rights

The concept of human rights is at its base a political concept derived from philosophy, and does not itself have the weight of a primary philosophy. There are essentially two general theories of the derivation of human rights. Positivists hold that rights are created by society. This may be an objective positivism, deriving its concepts of rights through objectivist deduction. It may be a collective positivism, holding that rights are created by actions of the state, thus making the individual in some measure subservient to the state.

A naturalist philosophy of human rights holds that rights derive from the natural state of mankind, and holds “this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Thus states are subservient to the people, in that the people create the nation-state. The systems worldview presented here is consistent with that view.

The state does not exist naturally, and cannot exist as an entity isolated from and independent of life. It is a creation of life itself, namely of the no”sphere. It is a product of the world of thought. The state does occur in nature since mankind is a part of the natural world. However, the state’s jurisdictional boundaries, though drawn in the earth by mankind, are not features that exist independently.

A natural systems view makes obvious that people differ in abilities as well as disabilities, as we mentioned above. Our equality is not an economic, intellectual, or morphologic equality. Our equality lies in the degree to which we are human — which is completely. Our equality is a spiritual equality, and it is only that equality which may, and must, be recognized by the state.

Rights derive from this aspect of individual humanity, not from membership in any particular group. Thus it is appropriate to think of human rights, but not of rights based on distinctions of race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation or some other descriptive category.

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In its view of the world as system, reverence for life offers an attitude and perspective which harmonizes many of the seemingly competing theories, principles, values, and arguments which seek to guide right action. When such theories and arguments conflict in a particular context, reverence for life provides the insights necessary to correctly choose and apply the various theories for the maintance of the balance of life. On comparative examination, reverence for life stands as the first principle of ethics.

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: The Ethical Model

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) ETHICAL THEORIES — For a useful abbreviated summary of ethical theories, see Samuel Gorovitz: “Moral Conflict and Moral Choice” in Doctor’s Dilemmas: Moral conflict and Medical Care. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. p 83 ff.

(2) “A MAN IS TRULY ETHICAL ONLY” — Schweitzer. PC, p 310.

(3) “WHO AMONG US KNOWS WHAT SIGNIFICANCE” — AS.OMLT, p 271.

(4) “IF WE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CLARIFY” — Raymond J. Lawrence. “David the `Bubble Boy’ and the boundaries of the human.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1985 (Jan 4). 253: 74-76.

(5) “TRIPLE CONTRACT” — Robert M. Veatch. A Theory of Medical Ethics. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Cited in review, JAMA 1982 (April 23); 247: 2293.

This is the nineteenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic 18) The Ethical Field

MetaEthics

Donivan Bessinger, MD

Throughout our study of systems and ethics, we have been confronted with considerations of level, and have encountered a number of ways in which one level may be used to illustrate or illuminate the operation of another. In discussing “the ethics of ethics,” we are defining another level that must be inextricably involved in the making of right decisions. It is that other level of ethical concern that we designate as metaethics.

The meta-prefix may be unfamiliar to some readers. It is a “learned borrowing from the Greek,” in the dictionary’s words, which indicates a level set apart (beyond, above, etc.) from the reference level, and which defines operations at the reference level in some way. (1) The term’s growing use is owed mostly to computer science, a discipline much involved with considerations of level. For example, one hears such terms as metadata, which may be interpreted as “data about data.” Following that usage, metaethics becomes “ethics about ethics.”

In recent academic usage, metaethics is that division of ethics which deals with theories about ethics, as distinguished from normative and applied ethics which seek ethical standards and solutions in stated situations. Our use of metaethics is similar, but its focus is applications, not academics. Here, we deal specifically with a concept of metaethics that can be applied in the life systems context.

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In our work to this point, we have held that action must be resolved anew in each situation, giving due regard to all of the forces acting on the situation (the ethical field). At the level of ethical action, our reference level, the ethical impulse arises as reverence or respect for life, and seeks the good of life’s system balance.

Defining the goal of a decision and defining the attitude in which the problem must be solved are both major steps toward making ethical decisions. However, these are still not sufficient guidance, and do not in themselves define “right action.” An additional set of considerations must be brought into play, to direct the decision process itself, to define the extent of action required, and to evaluate whether the outcome is consistent with the processes and the goals of life systems.

While the conditions defining the situation are highly variable and must be individually analyzed, the life-process considerations are much more stable and structured. These considerations are derived from and are defined in the study of the life-system itself. These stable “constants” do not provide rules to be applied to the situation being decided; they provide rules for the process of making the decision. These considerations (rules) for the decision making process operate at the “meta” level, the level above ethics. It is these metaethical rules which comprise the metaethical postulates.

Formally, a postulate is a statement taken as self-evident, or accepted without proof. However, these metaethical statements derive from our study of world systems, and are consistent with the natural order, as has been made evident in the work presented in Wholeness and Ethic. Here, the term postulate is not used in the meaning “self-evident,” but in its other senses of fundamental principle or a necessary condition.

The term metaethical statement is also appropriate. In computer programming, a statement is a line of instructions that require the computer to approach a problem in a certain way. Though a program may have many variables (designated memory locations) that contain different values at different times, the instructions themselves are constant. The instruction statements do not change, regardless of the number of different inputs, or the number of times the program is run. Similarly, the metaethical statements require the decision maker to handle each situation, regardless of the variations, in a constant and ethical way.

These statements define both the decision and the resulting actions, and are deemed to apply potentially in some respect to all decisions. However, in a given situation, not every statement may be given equal weight. Any decision attempts to find the best fit with all of the statements. They are not laws, but guidelines in the non-legalistic sense of that often misused term. Nor are they definitions of the ethical. These are the necessary conditions or the instruction statements that govern the making of ethical decisions:

(a) Act in an attitude of reverence for all life.

The metaethical system must be derived from the same principle that is to govern both the solving of ethical problems and the acts resulting from the decisions. The deed must be governed by the word. If reverence for life is to govern ethics, the act of deciding to act must be approached in the same attitude.

The reverence for life ethic is directed to all life. No life is excluded from consideration. In that respect, reverence for life defines an important principle that is not adequately considered in ethical systems based on altruism. Reverence for life includes reverence for one’s own life.

The language here suggests the modern difficulties with the original English translation of Schweitzer’s term. Reverence (respect) for one’s own self does not imply any measure of narcissism or ego-centrism. Rather, it recognizes that one’s own self is a part of the web of kinship of all life, and fully deserves the consideration given to other life. Acting under the inspiration of reverence (respect) for life is done in full awareness of the requirements for survival and development of all life, including one’s own.

(b) Act so as to meet life needs.

The corollary of this postulate is to act so as to avoid denying life needs. A situation requires careful analysis of the potential life-effects of a proposed action, and in this respect, each situation requires a certain level of science (knowledge) of life-systems that must be taken into account. The ethics of reverence for life require respect for and practice of science.

Acting in accordance with this postulate requires making a distinction between needs and wants. Meeting life needs will require the regretful injury of other life. For example, I must kill something if I am to eat and survive. Moreover, the reverence for life principle does not require avoiding any particular type of food, so long as my choices do not violate life’s balance. Reverence for life does impose a limit on my wants. Mere wants that may not be gratified without injury to the balance of life are found by reverence for life to be unethical.

In acting to meet life’s needs, one must remain aware that life is a self-regulating process with limits. Reverence for life accepts that individuals cannot live forever. It finds no obligation to artificially extend metabolic process when there is no prospect that the individual organism can recover its homeostasis. Respect for life implies respect both for life’s needs and for its natural limits.

(c) Act to further the development of life.

Reverence for life seeks the development of life both individually and collectively, for life itself seeks development. Life is not ordered for development toward “perfection” but toward balance. Life develops in the autonomic operation of its will-to-live, seeking to reach the fullness of both its form and its function. Will-to-live exerts a steady tension between what the organism has become and what it yet can be.

In unconscious life, acting ethically toward balance is the natural condition, an expression of unconscious will-to-live. In conscious life, acting ethically requires a conjunction of unconscious will-to-live with a conscious Will (desire) to live and to develop in balance with all life. The ethics of reverence for life seeks for all life, conscious or not, its freedom to act ethically within the limits set by life itself.

(d) Act in consideration of all life effects.

“Think globally.” All life is inter-related. Actions vary in the intensity and generality of their effects, but the effects of actions potentially resonate throughout the biosphere in many indirect and often unintended ways. Many actions seem weak in this respect, in that their effects seem to dissipate immediately. However, actions may have far-reaching effects even at an imperceptible level. (2)

Therefore, in proposing actions, one must consider potential effects globally, not only throughout the reference level of the system, but also at the levels above and below the reference level. Reverence for life is concerned with all life.

(e) Act at the most proximate level practicable.

“Act locally.” The closer one is to the level of proposed action and to the issues at stake, the more one will be sensitive to the needs inherent in the situation. The appropriate level of intensity for the action, and the immediate effects of the action will be more apparent when the decision maker is acting directly. Acting locally helps preserve proportionality between the need and the response. (3)

(f) Act to maximize the probability of ethical outcome.

In a complex system, one cannot guarantee an outcome based on a direct cause and effect calculation. Just as in quantum theory and in virtually all of the sciences, one must think in terms of probabilities, realizing that a given action might not have precisely predictable results, and may produce side effects. One must act with an ethical motive realizing that there is a risk that the outcome may be unexpected or undesired.

(g) Act to conserve diversity.

One of the most striking characteristics of the biosphere is the extraordinary diversity of life forms. That very diversity has been an important factor in the survival and development of life on the planet, giving life in the aggregate an adaptability, resiliency, and healing capacity which it otherwise could not have. An apparently unimportant form of life is still to be valued as a part in the chain of life. It “has value” to some other form of life on which some other form of life depends. Each species has been important in the development of all life.

(h) Act to conserve individuality.

The organisms of some less complex life forms have so little individuality that it is difficult to tell them apart, and those life forms usually must be considered as a whole. Nevertheless, each individual organism, regardless of its level of development or consciousness, “values” itself and autonomically responds to its own “will-to-live.” Respect for life requires respect for this autonomic homeostatic imperative in each individual life.

The more complex the life form is, and the more individualized it is, the more the individual must be considered, for such individual has greater importance to the survival of the whole. For humans, each type of skill and each new thought carries the potential to be a valuable contribution to the whole of life.

(i) Act to conserve responsibility.

In a complex society, decisions often need to be shared. Committees, boards, congresses, and electorates all make major decisions that affect millions of lives, in all potential ways. Even so, individuals who make decisions in groups are making individual decisions. Group decisions demand the same standard of ethical thinking and concern as any personal decision.

One may not subordinate ethics to some other purpose. Every decision must be given its proper ethical weight. In an inter-related world, all questions are life questions. Operating at another life level does not invoke some alien non-life ethic. Company interest, profit margins, and national interest are not valid as guiding ethical principles, even when group decisions are concerned. (4)

“Thinking sincerely” is the ethical requirement at all levels of human action. Each decision maker must think through each situation, and one cannot rely on rules coded by others to assuage the personal guilt of an unethical decision.

(j) Act to conserve thought.

We have come to all of these conclusions because of knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of the world. We have relied on thought. Before humans, life apparently developed unconsciously, automatically. Now the result of human development (of civilization) is dependant on what humans consciously think. The integrity and preservation of the no”sphere, or the thought-sphere, is critical to the preservation and further development of all life.

There is an ethical responsibility not only to conserve, but also to expand, the process and product of thought. Commitment to conserving thought includes a commitment to building knowledge. Since knowledge is the sum of that which is verifiable, and thus true (insofar as truth can be known), the commitment to preserving thought is also a commitment to conserving and preserving truth. We must act both to honor wisdom and honor truth.

Reviewing the Metaethical Postulates (a) Act in an attitude of reverence for all life. (b) Act so as to meet life needs. (c) Act to further the development of life. (d) Act in consideration of all (global) life effects. (e) Act at the most proximate (local) level practicable. (f) Act to maximize the probability of ethical outcome. (g) Act to conserve diversity. (h) Act to conserve individuality. (i) Act to conserve responsibility. (j) Act to conserve thought.

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How is the life lived in accordance with reverence for life to be ordered? How may the postulates be applied to real-life situations? One can envision a number of conflicts between different individuals, and between the demands of different levels. How do the postulates determine the ethical relationships between humans and non-human life? Between an individual human and human society? Between individual humans?

We begin with the perspective that the conscious practice of ethics is distinctively a human activity, but it relates to all human decisions and actions in the biosphere. Inevitably there are and will continue to be unconscious processes (human and non-human) beyond the reach of human consciousness. Globally aware reverence for life seeks to recognize (make conscious) potential harms to unconscious life, while allowing such life to proceed under its own autonomic controls. Globally aware reverence for life understands that denying the needs of other life will, whether in the short or the long term, constitute a harm also to human life.

How do the postulates determine the relationships between an individual human and human society? If the reference level is society, why may not the individual human be treated as a means to serve society’s own equilibrium? To do so, of course, would conflict with the requirements to conserve individual development, thought, and responsibility, all of which require maximizing individual freedom to that extent which does not begin to impair the freedom of other individuals. Only in honoring those postulates at the “local” individual level may society serve (“globally”) its own summum bonum.

The corollary of course is that the individual’s local summum bonum can only develop in awareness of the individual’s global obligations to society. While it is in society’s interest to allow freedom even for conscientious objection to a particular social service (for example, military service), it is the individual’s obligation to serve the social equilibrium (perhaps by alternative service?), which reverence for life does not allow him in “good conscience” to avoid. Such conflicts are not resolved through polarizations of hardened moral doctrine, but must be resolved interactively and non-disruptively with a global view by all concerned, of the needs of the life system.

But what of societies faced with a hardened and entrenched government (of whatever political label) which acts contrary to the postulates and denies individual freedom necessary to meet life’s needs? In such a case, the postulates provide the test for justifying the end of removing such a government, and for defining the means by which it may ethically be done. The postulates also define when the means is sufficient to the end. A revolution or coup d’etat undertaken in accord with reverence for life would avoid the common result of replacing one tyranny for another, and would be accomplished with the least possible injury to life.

Do the postulates provide guidance when the economic needs of the individual conflict with the resources of society? One immediately compelling problem is the current AIDS epidemic, in which rapidly escalating costs of individual treatment are multiplied by rapidly escalating numbers of cases to treat — cases which at present [1993] are universally expected to be fatal. Particularly in the care of the terminally ill, it is important to recognize life’s limits, and to avoid interventions which have no prospect of helping when the patient is beyond benefit. “Conserving thought” and knowledge requires the continuing search for measures which do provide benefit, though it does not follow that society must provide all patients equal access to unproven experimental treatments.

How do the postulates determine the relationships between individual humans? If the reference level is the individual, what determines whose life, or whose need, has precedence? The global view would argue that in a perceived conflict of individual interests, each seek the accomodation with the other that would best serve the interest of each, with least disruption to other individuals and to the social level. The global view would argue that neither has precedence, and that all such situations must be resolved dyamically without inflicting injury.

Conflicting claims of individual precedence can be especially troublesome. One particularly difficult issue in biomedical ethics is the question of whether the organs of an anencephalic * (fatally impaired) infant may be taken for transplantation into another (less impaired) child who might use them to survive. Here, one individual organism is claimed to take precedence over another, but there is a societal issue as well: could a society reach its summum bonum through a policy of promoting the “predation” of one human on another?

Such an anencephalic organism exhibits an “unconscious autonomy” of its own autonomic “will-to-live.” An individual who may be beyond benefit of medical therapy may not be beyond harm, since it exhibits active homeostatic processes, the very processes which make its organs of interest for transplantation. Respect for individuality, even when the individual is severely impaired and there is virtually no prospect for development, argues for not taking such organs until the individual can be shown to be beyond harm.

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By opening up new levels of analysis and argument, the metaethical postulates of life-systems ethics provide guidance even in complex situations involving multiple levels of action. Yet they also define our responses in the most simple encounters of life. One must be cautious in giving and interpreting specific examples, for the ethics of reverence for life insist on individual analysis and individual responsibility in each situation. Even when a situation seems similar to an example, the variables in the new situation may well be different, and a new analysis is not necessarily bound by the precedent.

Yet examples are indispensable for learning to apply the principle of reverence for life in practice. Schweitzer did not discuss reverence for life in terms of metaethics. The postulates derive from our analysis of the systems worldview, but they prove to be consistent with Schweitzer’s work. Let us consider how the postulates might apply to one of Schweitzer’s simplest and most poetic examples.

Whenever I injure life of any sort, I must be quite clear whether it is necessary. Beyond the unavoidable, I must never go, not even with what seems insignificant. The farmer, who has mown down a thousand flowers in his meadow as fodder for his cows, must be careful on his way home not to strike off in wanton pastime the head of a single flower by the roadside, for he thereby commits a wrong against life without being under the pressure of necessity. (5)

In a world concerned about hunger, racism, terrorism, and the threat of nuclear arms, or about disease and limited economic resources, a single wildflower seems hardly to be an object of ethical concern. However, in this illustration, Schweitzer has given us an excellent parable for considering how the system of natural ethics may be applied to even more complicated problems.

Even though there might have been many variables not stated here which might have been apparent to the farmer in real life, at this simple level he will inevitably act intuitively. However, if in his reverence for life he did need to appeal to linear reasoning, he would reach beyond the ethical “real” level to the metaethical level.

At the ethical level (the level of his action in this situation) the farmer is faced with an imperative to provide for his cows so that he may provide for himself and his family. In so doing, he acts in accordance with life needs, supports life’s development, and has directly applied himself (responsibly and locally) to the work necessary to maximize the probability of an ethical outcome.

The individuality of the stalks of hay, or whatever the fodder was, has been sacrificed to support the individuality of his cows and thus of himself and his family (and thus of human thought). Moreover, he provides for the diversity of life and permits regrowth of the fodder by taking only what he needs in the least injurious way. So far, he has acted ethically in applying the metaethical statements appropriately. Within the sphere of his local system, he has served the interests of life’s balance.

The ethical problem of the roadside flower is not central to that process, and so far is not even a consideration. Yet, acting in reverence for life and globally in consideration the broader implications of his actions, the farmer notices the flower and makes it a consideration. Had it been necessary to injure the flower, he undoubtedly could justify the action so long as he does it in such a way that the system itself is not violated and is allowed to recover. Had he injured it unnecessarily and without noticing it, his greater guilt would lie, not in the injury of the individual plant, but in the failure to act in respect and in global awareness.

Thus are decisions made with the guidance of metaethics. In this simple, almost childish, example, the beauty of a single flower leads us to conserve thought, and think about the web of relationship of all life. Clearly the present global situation places us all under “the pressure of necessity” to consider the balance of all life. The world can continue to be beautiful only if we “think sincerely” and see even the simplest actions of life as the concern of ethics.

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Comparative Ethics 

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) “LEARNED BORROWING” — I am using the unabridged edition of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1973.

(2) “GLOBALLY, LOCALLY” — The “Think globally, act locally” formula is taken from Rene Dubos, “The Wooing of Earth” (1980). See The World of Rene Dubos: A Collection of His Writings. Gerard Piel and Osborn Segerberg, Jr., Editors. New York: Henry Holt, 1990. — Also Fritjof Capra. The Turning Point. New York: Bantam, 1983. p 300.

(3) ONE MAY NOT SUBORDINATE ETHICS — See Schweitzer’s discussion: PC, p 324.

(4) ANENCEPHALIC INFANT — An infant with a brain stem, but with congenital absence of higher brain structures. Such infants exhibit spontaneous heart and respiratory function, and other reflexes, and perhaps movement of extremities. The abnormality is usually fatal in early infancy, but rare survivals into childhood of some such infants have been reported.

(5) “WHENEVER I INJURE” — Schweitzer. PC, p 318.

 

This is the eighteenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil 17) Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic

The Ethical Field

Donivan Bessinger, MD

The concept of ethics expressed as attitude rather than as rules can be both perplexing and intimidating — perplexing since “right action” is not immediately obvious, and intimidating in the apparent complexity of decision-making. The ethical model, with Good at the fulcrum of the balance seems simple enough, until one sees that there is not just one set of opposing characteristics on only one balance beam. The Good seeks to resolve not just simple polarities, but to find the balance point of all of the many converging and overlapping vectors or directions of actions in the universe.

In geometry and physics, a vector is a line that defines both the direction of an action, and its magnitude. For example, in diagrams of forces acting on a sailboat, the current and wind and boat motion can be shown as arrows pointing in a certain direction, and the length of each line can indicate the speed. The behavior of the boat is a result of the balance of the forces.

A vector diagram of a typical ethical problem, however, would be far more complex than that. It might well seem even worse than an art museum’s problem of suspending a modernistic mobile sculpture, especially one which has many arms of different length pointing in all directions, and which is not symmetrical in any plane. Only the art director with a clear vision of the beauty of the balanced work would bother to try, and persist until the balance is achieved.

If all ethical problems were really of such complexity, we would have no reasonable hope of acting ethically without recourse to a computer — it would take a computer to calculate the vectors. Besides, the programming would require reducing problems to “rules”. Is there a way to view the problems more simply? Is there a model that permits organizing the complexity of ethical problems, so that ethics can be practiced on a human scale?

An elementary physics demonstration helps here. If a horseshoe magnet is held beneath a glass plate, and the plate is thinly covered with randomly scattered metal filings, the filings align themselves along curved lines between the poles of the magnet. The filings are subject to an invisible field of magnetic force.

Actions at the atomic and subatomic levels are also governed by a field of invisible forces — electromagnetic, gravitational, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Particles and the quantum pulses of energy interact according to the forces. The field is the medium in which the transference of forces takes place. It is as if there were an invisible network which influences every thing within it.

Ethical actions are also subject to a “field theory” of sorts. Actions take place in a network of forces, invisible in themselves but visible in their effects. A complex field of socioeconomic, legal, scientific, and technologic forces competes in shaping every human action. Each of these categories of forces must be considered in making decisions. The forces define what is a possible action, and what are the probable outcomes of an action.

Socio-economic forces include all of the social, cultural, and monetary influences on action. Actions typically affect a number of people. Certain actions may be urged by social pressures, such as ethnic traditions or religious ritual requirements. Others may be prevented by such concerns. For example there may be a strong social tabu in regard to some proposed action. Of course, a tabu often has some ethical consideration at its base. There are nearly always considerations of economics. For example, is an action affordable? Often, the economic effects of an action are the most far-reaching. In some of the most difficult medical decisions, the economic pressures are very strong.

Legal forces include all of the legislative, judicial and regulatory considerations impinging on a situation. That these have become complex is obvious on most hospital committees of medical ethics. An attorney is appointed, not necessarily because of expertise in ethical theory. The lawyer is there to pilot the committee through the hazardous reefs of concretized parasitic legal growth in the sea of human affairs.

Science is the force of knowledge. Actions are influenced by all of the knowledge bearing on a subject. What is possible? What are the alternatives? What is the expected proximate result of an action? What distant effects may be predicted? Though one may act in ignorance, one usually may not ethically do so. Though one may act with ethical sensitivity and ethical intent, lack of knowledge in planning or performing the action may lead to an undesired and counter-ethical result.

Technology is the force that determines what tools are used in performing a proposed action. Science and technology are often lumped together as one concept, for technology is inextricably tied to research and to knowledge. However, knowledge is an essential and separate element in decisions about which technologic alternative is the more appropriate. Too often the mere availability of a means of performing an action results in its use, especially if there is an economic incentive to do so. It is as though there were an almost autonomous “technologic imperative” to action. Technology must be isolated as only one of several considerations in resolving issues ethically.

The “forces” in these four categories shape all human actions. Of course, these are not forces that tend toward ethics. The ethical impulses originate elsewhere, in the natural ethic or attitude that is described as reverence for life. The field defines the limits of action. It is the reality field which moderates idealistic and sentimental impulses. It is the “local reality” or medium through which ethical energies are transmitted into specific actions. It is also the field in which the effects of actions resonate to effect other levels of action. It is the medium in which “friction” operates to limit the reach of an action.

All of these forces are derived from the collective functioning of human consciousness. In that sense, the ethical field is a function of the noosphere, the collective conscious. Just as a particle emerges from the quantum field under the influence of the internal balance in the field of physical forces, so does ethical action emerge within the balance of forces operating in the noosphere.

In this context, the field may be thought of as the “internal environment” for the particular level being considered. It is the level at which homeostasis of the system operates. For example, at the level of the original and most ordinary use of the term, homeostasis is the regulation of the internal balances of the individual organism. At the atomic and cosmic levels, the field is the quantum field. At the societal level, the field is the ethical field.

We are using ethical field to indicate the level which is defined by the reach of human action. As science and technology expand to permit action at other levels of the universe, the ethical field will be extended. For example, sterilizing the spacecraft used in exploration of the surface of Mars had ethical as well as scientific implications. From the scientific standpoint, it would not have been acceptable to have the experiments contaminated with Earth life, for that would have nullified any findings about the presence of Martian life. The ethical consideration, however, was to avoid contaminating any Martian life, at least until we knew more about what we were doing.

It is in the seeking of its balance that the system or any subsystem (organism) develops. It is in finding the balance that the system (organism) finds its fullfillment. The Good is found in the regulation of the system itself. ‘Peace’ for the system is a natural golden mean, and the Middle Way of Confucianist writings. The Middle Way was propounded in one of the great “Four Books” of Confucianist philosophy, the earliest dating from the sixth century BCE. It has also been called the “steadfast mean”, or Chung Yung. Chung denotes the correct course to be pursued by all under heaven. Yung denotes the fixed principle regulating all under heaven. (1)

The Good is found in actions which seek to optimize the ability of a self-regulating system to serve the development of life in all of its aspects. In Schweitzer’s terms, it is not sufficient merely to protect life from injury. The natural ethic (reverence for life) seeks to raise life to the highest level to which it can develop. (2)

One may well ask whether we have not created a model that makes ethics more complicated, rather than more simple. No decision, or combination of decisions by any one person is able to regulate precisely the balance of a system that includes so many influences. An ethical system surely cannot provide control of such complexities.

Though that may be true, it misses the point. The goal of an individual ethical act is not to regulate precisely the total balance in the field. According to the definitions of systems theory, a system is self-regulating. The Good is found in the balance of the self-regulating system. It is the resultant of many interrelated actions which in the aggregate bring the system to find its balance. In our systems-oriented approach to natural ethics, the ethical system is not a systematic outline of knowledge and theory about ethics; it is the organic system within which humans act, seeking actions which serve the balance.

However, even if we cannot directly and fully regulate the balance of a system that is essentially self-regulating, we do need some means of sensing the direction of balance, if actions are to be applied ethically. But how can that balance be expressed, or sensed?

The forces of the ethical field are described in terms of economic and demographic statistics, as scientific data, as laws or regulations, as technologic specifications. These data may define the power of the forces, but cannot in themselves express the organic balance of the system. Therefore, though we may need to calculate statistical averages and monitor selected indicators or indices, we may not rely on them to determine ethics. We must sense the direction of ethical action by other means.

Does the “conscience” somehow play a role? Is the conscience a conscious expression of an unconscious gyroscope, somehow sensing balance, or a compass, sensing direction? Perhaps so if (in Jungian terms) the transcendent function is operating. The first ethical responsibility is to “Know oneself” in the totality of the self, so as to maintain awareness of one’s own balance, in order to act in harmony with other life. However, as we have commented, consciousness can be deluded. The voice of “conscience” may in fact be the voice of a near-autonomous ego complex, overriding the transcendent function.

Is altruism a measure or sensor of ethical action? Stated another way, is the most altruistic action always the most ethical? The problem of whether a given act is purely an act of altruism or egoism can always be a subject for ripe debate. That itself suggests that the truth of the case is that neither can be “purely” or exclusively true. The systems worldview provides the proper perspective: altruism and egoism are always interrelated and interactive, and neither impulse can operate in isolation.

Altruism always has an operative egoistic component. In every altruistic impulse, the ego can find some positive value to itself. That positive value would be very short lived when (as is occasionally recorded) one seeks intentionally to give one’s life for another. Nevertheless, in the moments that the impulse is entertained, the ego finds its value.

Nor can the ego operate exclusively in its own interest. Even if it deludes itself into trying to do so, there will be a negative social feedback that operates against the development and fulfillment of the ego’s “owner”, and thus works to its own detriment. Though the argument is negative, the point is made: egoism and altruism are interactive.

It follows that neither altruism nor egoism is a satisfactory measure, by itself, of the direction of ethical action. An act taken in one’s own ego-interest may give rise to an altruistic benefit, for example when from ego-interest one starts a business and generates jobs for others, or useful products or services for others. A egoistic act may indeed be ethical, though of course the means as well as the ends of the act must be considered in reaching that conclusion.

May the direction of ethical action be expressed in terms of avoidance or amelioration of pain and suffering? We have discussed the problem of pain and ethics, finding that pain is not always evil. Sometimes it is supportive of protection from further injury and healing. Sometimes pain is necessary in treatments designed to promote healing. Much the same could be said for suffering. Eric J. Cassel makes the distinction in a medical article, saying that if pain means physical distress, there still may be suffering as psychological or social distress, even after the pain is cured. (3)

Yet the same principle operates with psychological and social distresses, as with physical distress: it may be the constructive alerting signal without which healing processes could not be activated. An anesthetic that dulls pain without providing treatment may be unethical. (4) Actions which dull the senses to social and psychological suffering and thus prevent a reactive healing response are unethical also.

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We (agreeing with Schweitzer) have said that specific prior rules and value scales are not admissible in determining the direction of ethical action. As quoted in the last chapter, Schweitzer argues that humans have a conflict of interest in deciding what form of life is more valuable to the universe, or what value a form of life carries within itself. Thus, actions which must be taken for our own survival and which injure or destroy other life must be taken with awareness and with regret, and only after due consideration.

Above we have mentioned that both means and ends must be considered in evaluating whether an act is ethical. The concept of the ethical field of interactive influences helps demonstrate that both means and ends influence the balance of the life system. No end justifies a means that is detrimental to life’s balance; no means is ethical if directed toward an end which tends to destroy life’s balance.

We are faced with a complicated field of ethical action. As tests of the ethical, we have rejected (among other things) rules, value scales, statistics and specifications, altruism and anesthesia. What possible help is there to be? We still need some means of guidance for action. In such a situation, conventional wisdom cries out for rules and certainties.

Attempting to provide such assurances at the level of ordinary actions is the focus of normative ethics, that is, studies directed toward providing norms or standards of action. As the complexity of the ethical field demonstrates, each situation is subject to a different set of forces or considerations. Yet, nothing in the context of an action specifically defines right action.

Resolving these dilemmas of applied ethics does require some further guidance. The answer lies in defining an ethics of ethics. That is our next task.

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: MetaEthics

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) CHUNG YUNG — “The Doctrine of the Steadfast Mean”, See The Portable World Bible, R. O. Ballou, editor. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. p 510.

(2) RAISE LIFE TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL — Schweitzer. OMLT, p 188.

(3) PAIN DISTINGUISHED FROM SUFFERING — Eric J. Cassel. “The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine.” New England Journal of Medicine, 1982 (March 18). 306: 639-645.

(4) DULLING PAIN — Of course, an action to dull pain without giving other treatment is ethical when no efficacious treatment is available.

This is the seventeenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics 16) Good, Ethics, and Evil

To become ethical means to think sincerely.

—Albert Schweitzer (1)

Donivan Bessinger, MD

The ethical model just presented demonstrates that acting ethically requires acting with awareness. Acting ethically is influenced by one’s own feelings. It requires bringing into consciousness one’s own motives. It requires thinking sincerely of the effects of actions on life systems. Though ethical analysis requires applying logic and reason, ethics is also a matter of attitude.

In presenting the ethical model, we have used a direct linear style of thought to build a logical structure. Yet now we say that we must not only think, but “think sincerely”. We must consider attitude, even feelings. What place have feelings in philosophy?

From the standpoint of the natural systems worldview, and in the light of modern knowledge about the dynamics of the human psyche, we must now reply that feelings have a place in philosophy because they have a place in human functioning.

Feelings influence our worldview, and the dynamic unconscious (of which feelings are symptoms) provides images for conscious processing and thus directly influences the conscious processes of reason.

Thought is not limited to linear logic, but includes the creative and sublime process of searching for patterns which express meaning. Linear logic is the process by which the knowledge base is constructed. However, linking the knowledge base requires more. Sublime thought is that attitude of thought which provides the energy field in which creative insight first glows.

There have been few minds as well prepared to deal creatively with the questions of life and ethics as that of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. In his description of reverence for life, Schweitzer presents the attitudinal dimension of the natural ethic. Since his life story provides an important part of his ethical argument, a brief life sketch is pertinent.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was uniquely challenged by his position in place, time, and training to sense a need for, and to develop a modern ethic. His birthplace in Alsace had been alternately German and French as wars and political tides had swept past. His lifetime overlapped Darwin’s by five years, and spanned the development of modern scientific civilization through two world wars and the use of nuclear weapons.

His academic work in centers of European learning (Berlin, Strassburg, Paris) included published treatises on the philosophy of Kant, Goethe, and India. He published several theological works, and a biography of J. S. Bach. He was a concert organist. His international rank in philosophy, theology and music brought him into contact with the learned in many nations.

Despite these multiple successes, Dr. Schweitzer determined to devote himself to service rather than scholarship. Upon completion of a medical degree in 1913, he moved to Africa and founded a hospital at Lambarene (French Equatorial Africa, now Gabon), and he worked there until his death in 1965. Nevertheless, he maintained contact with Europe through regular visits for lectures and concerts (by which he raised funds for the Lambarene hospital), and with the world through an active correspondence. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1953.

Lost in thought I sat on the deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not discovered in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences, merely to keep myself concentrated on the problem. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, “Reverence for Life.” The iron door had yielded: the path in the thicket had become visible. (2)

The trip on the OgooueÇ River in Gabon on which Schweitzer named reverence for life came early in his African experience (September 1915), and he used the term in a sermon in Strassburg in 1919. However, reverence for life was first set forth formally in Civilization and Ethics, the second volume of his Philosophy of Civilization (Kulturphilosophie, 1923).

As original thinkers must, Schweitzer described his concepts in terms having special meaning. In his presentation of reverence for life, the key concept was will-to-live, a term which he seems to have chosen in answer to Schopenhauer’s use of it. Schopenhauer is not easy to quote, but this passage introduces his meaning:

The will, which, considered purely in itself, is without knowledge, and is merely a blind incessant impulse, as we see it appear in unorganized and vegetable nature and their laws, and also in the vegetative part of our own life …

And since what the will wills is always life, just because life is nothing but the representation of that willing for the idea, it is [the same] if, instead of simply saying “the will,” we say “the will to live.” (3)

Schweitzer described all life as impelled by will-to-live. The German is Lebenswille. Whether conscious or not, all life shares an inner imperative, a metabolic healing struggle to reproduce, to survive, to prevail. The will-to-live is that aspect of life which distinguishes the living organism from its mere matter and shape. If he had developed these thoughts after Cannon wrote in 1929, Schweitzer might well have referred to will-to-live as homeostasis. One could certainly argue a distinction, but the key point is that life, in whatever form, is a dynamic system ordered toward survival.

In modern usage, will is a term of consciousness. However, will-to-live must be distinguished from a conscious will (desire) to live. Will-to-live operates even when one consciously wills to die. If suicide is to be successful, the traumatic insult must be sufficient to overcome life’s innate will-to-live. It is to indicate that distinction that I have chosen to write will-to-live as one hyphenated word.

Schweitzer wrote that “Whether it can express itself before me, or remains dumb”, there is in all will-to-live “a longing for wider life and for the mysterious exaltation of the will-to-live which we call pleasure, with dread of annihilation and of the mysterious deprecation of the will-to-live which we call pain”. (4)

Schweitzer’s will-to-live concept accepts life as it finds it, and is fully prepared to acknowledge the physicochemical processes which govern metabolism and reproduction. Since the concept does not imply a metaphysical or necessarily mysterious life force, and since it does not attempt to explain the meaning or source or nature of life itself, it cannot be equated to the ancient concept of vitalism.

As shown in the quote above, Schopenhauer acknowledged that will-to-live included an unconscious motivating force, and that the force was present in lower forms of life. However, as he developed his system, he equated will-to-live with desire and thus dealt primarily with conscious manifestations. For him, since will-to-live was based on desire that was ultimately unsatisfiable, life was a state of suffering, leading one to draw away from the life of the world toward an ideal of quiescent inactivity. Durant characterizes this work of his as “a great anthology of woe.” (5)

Schweitzer strongly refuted Schopenhauer’s life-negating philosophy. In will-to-live, Schweitzer found instead a fully positive concept, affirming life, and drawing one toward creative involvement and life-fulfillment. That sort of will-to-live is not unlike Aristotle’s concept that life (indeed, all matter) contains its purpose within itself.

To express that idea, Aristotle coined the term entelecheia, using the roots entos (within), telos (purpose), and echein (to have). An entelechy was that which made matter (the mere elements of something) realize its potential form (its order or arrangement). For a living organism, it was the difference between its mere anatomy and its living function. It was its inner self-directed activity or its “indwelling purposiveness”. (6)

Entelechy became the germ of vitalism, the doctrine that the life force is different from other forces in nature. That view of life withered as understandings of physicochemical function grew; yet as we have learned more of DNA and genetic programming and of the processes of homeostasis, it is ever more clear that at least in some sense, life does contain an “indwelling purposiveness”.

A magazine photograph of Mount Saint Helens, taken only a few months after the devastating life-sterilizing eruption, shows a wild-flower growing on ashen slopes; the caption: “Flowering volcano.” Life continually reaches out seeking its domain. Injured, it seeks to repair itself. It attempts to respond appropriately to its environment, reacting to changes in light, temperature, moisture, nourishment, reaching out to prevail. It reproduces, seeking survival not only for the individual but for the species.

In man, this metabolic, autonomic aspect of life is overlaid with a much higher order of consciousness of self, of needs, of others, and of environment, all giving further definition to will-to-live. Encompassing all is the complex world of thought, conscious and unconscious, directing life according to ideas and necessities decreed within. Options become greater and choices are forced.

Now, survival faces not only the challenge of the external environment, but is also placed at risk by the constant tension between will-to-live and conscious desire to act. Life is placed at the mercy of thought, for in failing to affirm life, thought can act out a denial of will-to-live and eventually loose all.

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In Ethics and Civilization, we discussed civilization, using Heraclitus’ concept of logos as meaning, and Buber’s “I-thou”. We were lead to the consideration that ethics arise naturally from the meaning given primal encounter, the primitive dialogue of shared existence. Schweitzer reached the same point by answering Descartes.

Humans find self defined in the inexorable link between thought and existence. Descartes, in seeking “the first principle of Philosophy” sought to “reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt.” But if he supposed that all was false, he was left with the premise that if he were thinking, he must Be. “Je pense, donc je suis” (“I think, therefore I am”). (7) “I see very clearly that in order to think, it is necessary to exist.” Thought does not define existence, but the fact of thought proves my existence.

However, “I think, therefore I am” cannot itself be the starting point of philosophy. Descartes’ first principle of Philosophy in modern usage would be read as first principle of knowledge. Schweitzer held that starting philosophy at the “I think” premise was both arbitrary and unnecessarily abstract, and held no promise of developing an ethical view.

Schweitzer argued that if we seek to develop an ethic based on knowledge alone, we are overcome by the vastness of human experience. We are rapidly overwhelmed by the extent of human knowledge, and by its rate of growth. Pressing our quest merely results in ever more complex descriptions of ever more minute phenomena. (8)

Clearly, Schweitzer’s objection was to a reductive view of knowledge. From our perspective now, it is in the reductive mode that no one can comprehend the whole, or harmonize its meaning with the aims and meaning of individuals within it.

Schweitzer held that we need to look “behind” reductive Cartesian thought. In so doing, we find that existence preceeds thought. Elemental consciousness of existence, of will-to-live, is the prerequisite of thought.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, which says: “I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live.” This is not an ingenious dogmatic formula. Day by day, hour by hour, I live and move in it. At every moment of reflection it stands before me. There bursts forth from it again and again as from roots that can never dry up, a living world- and life-view which can deal with all the facts of Being. A mysticism of ethical union with Being grows out of it. (9)

Ethics arise from the quality of meaning or the tension existing between individuals and between the individual and the group. There is also the constant internal tension between an individual’s will-to-live and his desire to act. Thus from Schweitzer’s concept of will-to-live arises the possibility of the widest possible ground of understanding of ethics, for there I begin to understand not only my relationship to others and to the world, but also my relationships within myself.

Ethics consist, therefore, in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do to my own. There we have given us that basic principle of the moral which is a necessity of thought. It is good to maintain and to encourage life; it is bad to destroy life or to obstruct it. (10)

Reverence for life, veneratio vitae, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live. In reverence for life, my knowledge passes into experience. … My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values. (11)

It is important to note that in Schweitzer’s work, reverence for life is not a value itself, that we derive entirely within consciousness. Reverence for life is instead the attitude arising from awareness of existence. It is under the influence of this attitude, and in awareness of life’s realities, that values are produced that are consistent with a naturally determined will-to-live.

Yet, ethics cannot be drawn from a wellspring of sentiment and intuition discovered “behind” thought. The link between existence and thought holds fast. The ethical tension between my will-to-live and my thought can only be disrupted clinically, for example by death or coma. While I am aware, the ethical tension is always exerted within me, and ethical discoveries and applications to life, though guided by my awareness of my will-to-live and will-to-live around me, may not be realized without thought. The ethics of reverence for life require a rigorous analysis of all factors bearing on a life-question, and appeal to a strong sense of personal responsibility: “To become ethical means to begin to think sincerely.”

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Though it is Schweitzer who brings it into modern philosophy, the principle of respect for life is by no means new. The sixth century BCE (Heraclitus, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Gautama Buddha) shines so brightly in the history of religious and ethical consciousness that it seems to represent a major evolutionary leap in human adaptive thought. A profound respect for life was the defining principle of the Buddha’s teaching. Mahavira, the contemporary of Buddha who inspired Jainism, taught reverence for life as the principle of ahimsa, which is reflected especially through the practice of non-injury and non-violence to life. Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged the great influence on himself of a Jaina teacher, and made ahimsa the guiding principle of modern political action (satyagraha).

Many religions have distorted early ethical insights and “strained gnats” in advancing doctrine and ritual. Jainist ascetics did so literally by wearing mesh masks to avoid ingesting even gnats. They were vegetarian, but also avoided agriculture, leaving the killing of plants to those less ethical.

Jainism’s ancient ideal of asceticism promoted escape from the world system more than ethical involvement in it. It was that element of Indian thought in general which influenced Schopenhauer’s views of life-denial and gained Schweitzer’s condemnation. In stark contrast, a systems view of ethics draws one toward ethical encounter with the world, and toward realization of inextricable involvement with it, and is illustrated in the lives of Schweitzer, Gandhi, Mother Teresa and many others less well known.

Schweitzer’s ethic was non-doctrinal and non-ritual. Still, to modern ears, reverence for life sounds somehow religious. However, reverence for life is not a creed. Schweitzer’s original word was Ehrfurcht; its German roots translate literally as “glory-fear” or “glory-awe”. Schweitzer speaks in language of awe, wonder, and respect rather than of ritualized worship. In French, the word is respect; in Latin, veneratio. Each conveys a slightly different meaning. Reverence for life includes all of these meanings.

The meaning of reverence for life does include a sense of spiritual or mystical oneness with all life. Though a pastor and a theologian, Schweitzer develops the concept in terms of philosophy, not appealing to the concept of Divine Creator. Yet he was concerned about theological rigidity that dampened a sense of spiritual adventure and inquiry, and near the end of his life, as reflected in conversations with Norman Cousins, he still harbored the hope that reverence for life would open the door to an evolving Christianity. (12)

Expressed as it is in philosophical existential terms, however, reverence for life does not conflict with any of the major “true” religions. (13)  It does of course conflict with all ideas, religious or otherwise, which negate the meaning of life and seek its destruction. The attitude of reverence for life enriches religion, and provides a basis for broader understanding among peoples of different religion.

In recent times, reverence for life has also been subject to confusion with the political slogan “right to life”. However, reverence for life is not a cause. It cannot be argued in terms of a political right. The idea of a political right implies a measure which can be guaranteed by the state. States can take life, as history amply demonstrates, but no state can give or guarantee it. Indeed, the State is only a creation of life itself. Nor does reverence for life give rise to any particular political agenda, for people of good will, equally committed to reverence for life, will inevitably encounter situations in which they have entirely different political views.

Reverence for life is not a code. Schweitzer refused to define rules or values for individual lives, and stressed instead individual responsibility and individual decision making. Reverence for life cannot be engendered by defining rules; nor does it lend itself to relative value scales for life.

To undertake to lay down universally valid distinctions of value between different kinds of life will end in judging them by the greater or lesser distance at which they seem to stand from us human beings — as we ourselves judge. But that is a purely subjective criterion. Who among us knows what significance any other kind of life has in itself, and as a part of the universe? …

To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed. (14)

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Since the publication of Civilization and Ethics, there have been many changes in civilization. Extraordinary growth in information and technology, scarcity and maldistribution of resources, economic diversity, and ethnologic and philosophic heterogeniety all bring a higher order of complexity to today’s problems, and make more difficult the achieving of a consensus on values. Yet without a value system, we are unable even to begin to answer Socrates’ (and our) question, “How should we live?”

Our various value systems are based primarily on prideful preservation of parochial interests. We compete for attention to our own concerns, or to those of our small closely-held ethnic, professional, or religious groups. We seek to define ourselves by the small differences which distinguish us, and we draw away from the search for the common values which could unite us.

The systems ethic, however, works toward unity and wholeness. In will-to-live, we find no cultural or religious bias, and we stand united. In the ethics of reverence for life, we are set free to draw together to begin to meet the needs of all life around us. 

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: The Ethical Field 

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) “TO BECOME ETHICAL MEANS” — Schweitzer. PC, p 309.

(2) “LOST IN THOUGHT I SAT” — AS. OMLT, p 185.

(3) “THE WILL, WHICH, CONSIDERED” — Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea (1818). Bk 4 Nr. 54.

(4) “WHETHER IT CAN EXPRESS ITSELF” — AS. PC. p 309.

(5) “A GREAT ANTHOLOGY OF WOE” — Will Durant. op. cit., page 300. — See also, Schweitzer. PC, Chapter 20.

(6) “INDWELLING PURPOSIVENESS” — Charles Singer. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1965. 8: 608.

(7) “I THINK, THEREFORE I AM” — Rene Descartes. Discourse on Method (1637). Part IV. – [Some interpreters regard the "Je pense" as referring to consciousness, rather than to cognition as such. Of course, consciousness is indispensible for ethics, and living in broader/deeper consciousness of one's relationship to all life is the essence of Schweitzer's formulation.]

(8) ETHIC BASED ON KNOWLEDGE ALONE — AS. PC, p 76.

(9) “TRUE PHILOSOPHY MUST START” — AS. PC, p 309.

(10) “ETHICS CONSIST, THEREFORE” — ibid.

(11) “REVERENCE FOR LIFE, VENERATIO” — AS. PC. p 79.

(12) EVOLVING CHRISTIANITY — Norman Cousins. Albert Schweitzer’s Mission: Healing and Peace. New York: Norton, 1985. p 124 ff.

(13) TRUE RELIGION — Bessinger, D. Religion Confronting Science. p 111.

(14) “TO UNDERTAKE TO LAY DOWN” — AS. OMLT, p 271.

This is the sixteenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem 15) Approaches to Natural Ethics

Good, Ethics, and Evil

Donivan Bessinger, MD

The natural ethic is derived empirically from a study of natural systems, rather than conjecturally through reason alone. It takes life as a given, and asserts that it is good for the natural system to survive. One presumably could devise an ethics of non-survival, but it would be an anti-ethics, which would bear the same relationship to life in the real world as does anti-matter: mutual anihilation upon contact.

The practice of ethics requires an understanding of what is good and what is not. That question has occupied thinkers in both philosophic and theological worlds for centuries. It would not be useful to research or review here the many terms and many shadings of technical and often tedious meanings assigned to them. However, it will be helpful to sketch some of the broad categories of arguments about the problem of good and evil.

A prevailing view has been the dualistic view, in which good is paired as an opposite to evil, usually personified as God and Satan. The struggle between good and evil thus becomes a struggle between God and Satan. A major problem for systematic theology, however, is how there can be any doubt of the outcome if God is both all-powerful and all-good. If a good God is in control, why is there evil? How can a good God allow “bad things to happen to good people,” as the title of Rabbi Kushner’s book so well expresses it. (1) For many people, the inconsistency of that model has been an insurmountable obstacle to religious belief.

Another dualistic view (or perhaps another aspect of the same view) is the polarity between a good God and an evil mankind. The Genesis account of creation affirms that as God created, “God saw that it was good.” However, the first act of ethical consciousness for humans was eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This dualistic view sees ethical consciousness as the alienation of mankind from God, which alienation was curiously symbolized by putting on clothes. In this view, mankind has been naturally evil (sinful) since Adam and Eve. At least that still leaves the rest of creation untainted.

There is still a theological problem. The concept of evil personified as an evil deity in competition with the good God, and the parallel concept of an evil mankind under Satan’s influence, both serve to taint the all-powerful God with evil. One response in early Christian theology, proposed by Origen and advanced by Augustine, has been the doctrine technically known as privatio boni. This doctrine (one of many different ones advanced in the early Christian Church to deal with this problem), holds that creation is good, as God said it was in the first place. Evil is simply that aspect of experience which falls short of achieving the good. Evil is the maiming or disabling of good, or as the term translates, the deprivation of the good. (2)

When Jung faced the problem of evil, he rejected the doctrine of privatio boni as not consistant with experience in psychology. Of course, the validity of Jung’s model of the psyche rests not on Jung’s views of good and evil and theology, but on its success in explaining human phenomena and in providing a basis for treatment of disease. Nevertheless, Jung sought to harmonize knowledge of the human psyche with these philosophical questions.

Jung does indeed find in the human psyche an inevitable dualism. This is evident in the polarizations between archetypal opposites, for example, masculine-feminine, introversion-extraversion, thinking-feeling, sensing-intuiting, etc. such as we discussed in Wholeness and Ethic. All psychic regulation seems to be directed toward achieving a natural balance (conjunction) of opposite characteristics. Further, Jung holds that in psychological terms, mankind’s access to God is through the collective unconscious, which is the image of God within. Jung thus expresses a view of God as morally neutral, incorporating potential for both good and evil. (3) It is important to consider that such a statement of potential does not necessarily imply evil intent operating simultaneously with good intent.

Much of the continuing confusion over the problem of good and evil in the world stems from a continuing reliance on a mythic model of good and evil. In defining the mythological worldview, we indicated that a mythic worldview can be true, but that its truth lies in the meaning of its symbolism. Such symbolism requires interpretation. The best test for the truth of an interpretation is the test for consistency with all other knowledge. It is in the workings of creation itself that the truth of interpretations about creation can best be found.

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The systems worldview which we have presented provides a foundation for constructing a more adequate model of good and evil. A proper model will be one which consistently agrees with observed phenomena.

First, a model must answer what is natural and what is “supernatural.” Supernatural, of course, refers to that which is above or apart from the natural, that is, apart from nature. In the systems worldview as I am defining it, all process is natural process. In its whole sense, Nature (Creation) includes phenomena heretofore considered metaphysical, or above and apart from or prior to, nature. (4)

The psyche with its symbolism is a part of ordinary nature, operating in accordance with natural laws. Of course, the science of the psyche is not as well understood (or as widely understood) as the science of the external material world. However, it is not valid to claim that an action must be “supernatural” merely because it is not understood.

In the systems worldview, only the question of the nature of the Creator (Person? Process?) is reserved as a supernatural question. That question is, of course, beyond the scope of this work. In our systems model, neither good nor evil is conceived as supernatural.

Second, the model must reflect a proper perspective on mankind in the universe. In the systems view of the universe, the question “How can bad things happen to good people” does not arise. That question is framed from the perspective of our conventional egocentric or anthropocentric worldview, and asks in effect, “How can bad things happen to a god like me?”

Though mankind does enjoy an exalted position with respect to consciousness and knowledge, there is no evidence that any human has any sort of god-like control over natural process. Humans can utilize (and misuse) natural process to achieve conscious purposes, but in no sense can humans override natural law. Only from an anthropocentric worldview can humans seem to “play god.” In the systems worldview, attempting to “play god” is seen as an exercise in dealing with very real human limitations.

Third, we must distinguish evil and misfortune. Again, anthropocentrism brings on confusion. A natural event is “evil” only as viewed from the human perspective. A volcano erupts neutrally, and the event which is viewed by some as misfortune may bring fortune to others. Nature is neutral. Its processes are not always comprehensible to mankind, but natural events occur without evil intent. Nature is also impersonal, and operates to “rain equally on the just and unjust.”

We must accept that all undesired situations do not necessarily have a single or an evil cause. We must accept that randomicity is a normal and natural aspect of the functioning of the universe. There is not always someone to blame. (5)

Fourth, we must clarify the many possible meanings or states of evil. In philosophical or theological terms, it is often adequate to deal with evil generically and in the abstract. However, a model that is consistent with the systems worldview and that is adequate to describe the psychological dimensions of dealing with evil, requires greater precision. For example, we must deal with both unconscious and conscious dimensions, and with energy as both potential and active. The usefulness of these distinctions will become clear.

The systems view of the universe makes it apparent that systems are regulated toward an internal balance, at whatever level is being studied. The end of life, “that at which all things aim,” is homeostasis. We have noted that systems exhibit emergence of new states or characteristics, such as consciousness emerging at the level of human life. Teilhard de Chardin has held that the end or aim of evolutionary creation is an omega point of unity in the Creator. However, at the level of ordinary actions (the level of ethical concern), all things aim toward homeostatic regulation for the survival and development of life.

In our ethical model, the Good is creation’s state of balance. The Good is found in the balance of interactive energies. The Good seeks to resolve not just simple polarities, but to find the balance point of all of the many converging and overlapping vectors or directions of action in the universe. It is in that balance that creation is seen as good.

In my view, creation and its balance are contingent on a creator. Such a question is beyond our scope here, but I make the comment to illustrate a point of harmonization between the natural systems worldview, and theological worldviews. Nevertheless, as we have stated, in this ethical model, the Good is determined empirically, and the model is not contingent on theological reasoning.

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If the ethical model were to be based on a good-evil polarization, in which good is placed opposite evil on a metaphorical teeter-totter, maintaining homeostatic balance would require that every good be always balanced by an equal force of evil. An ethical action to serve the good would add additional weight to that side of the teeter-totter, destroying balance, working counter to homeostasis. Obviously that does not satisfy the systems worldview.

Understanding the Good as the balance at the fulcrum of the systems teeter-totter requires a different ethical model. In that model, the action that tends toward restoring or preserving the balance is the ethical action. The action that tends toward destroying or preventing the balance, that is, the counter-ethical action, is the evil action.

Thus it is more appropriate to view evil as polarized against the ethical, rather than against the good. Defining the concept of balance does require a concept of non-balance. The Good should be understood as that which is dynamically complete within itself. Obviously the teeter-totter model is a severe over-simplification. The summum bonum (highest good) is a steady state or flux equilibrium, an optimally tuned balance, of the natural system, or more specifically, of the subsystem that is the immediate focus of ethical consideration. Such a concept of Good does not require an observable polarity.

As we noted before, G. E. Moore held that it is a naturalistic fallacy to impute to nature any characteristic as good. That is, we may not base ethics on some “good” merely because it is “natural.” (6) Our formulation of the Good as the flux equilibrium of unconscious, self-regulating natural systems avoids that objection. The Good is that at which unconscious natural systems are found to aim, rather than a property or characteristic of “Nature” itself. Saying that we see the life system surviving by serving the good of homeostasis is not equivalent to imposing on nature a characteristic considered by ego to be good.

Certain questions inevitably arise. For example, the universe seems to be expanding. In that respect, at the outer level of our knowledge of the universe, the universe does not seem in balance, and if not, the concept of Good as balance ultimately breaks down. Is not the model then incomplete?

We have said earlier that full understanding of a system requires at least consideration of the levels below and above the level which we are studying. There must be a limit to understanding at the level of the limits of the universe. We have also said that our purpose here is only to build an ethical model that will work at the level of ordinary actions, that is, at the level of ethical concern. We must accept that inevitable limitation of a natural philosophy of the Good, and study further the model’s application to human problems.

In such a model, the ethical action is the action that tends to restore or preserve balance, regardless of the side of the teeter-totter to which it must be applied. Of course, the counter-ethical (evil) action is one applied in the contrary direction.

Consider a simple but common example in medical practice, in which the physician must act to restore the acid – alkaline balance of the blood. Both acid and alkaline substances are necessary and thus good for life. However, sometimes a treatment must force change in the acid direction when the blood is too alkaline — that is ethical; in such a condition, even though alkaline substances can be good, intentionally forcing change in the alkaline direction would be evil.

But in a natural system, are there not several different states of equilibrium that may be possible? For example, homeostatic responses in an organism can adapt to a chronic disease process and maintain life by resetting the equilibrium. Similarly, society can adapt to a variety of economic, cultural, and environmental conditions, and maintain some degree of equilibrium for survival. Would not any dynamic state of equilibrium (of homeostasis) be good? To which of the several possible states must an action be directed?

If the state of knowledge and circumstances permit several options, the preferred action is the one that tends toward the highest state of equilibrium that the system would seek for itself. Conscious action must seek to promote the system’s own self-regulatory interactions, rather than seek to regulate the system to a particular pre-conceived equilibrium.

What about the problem of pain versus pleasure? Surely pain is evil and the absence of pain is good. However, that is not necessarily true. The distressing deformities of Hansen’s disease (leprosy) occur because of an absence of pain. The disease destroys sensation, so that pain does not provide its normal protective effect against repeated injury. For many illnesses, pain is the signal that brings intervention for healing. Pain can serve the good of homeostasis. But pain in other circumstances, or beyond that necessary for these functions, becomes evil, working against the state of productive well-being that is homeostasis. An ethical action may require causing pain for certain diagnostic studies or treatments, yet lacking such a purpose, causing pain is evil.

Pleasure too can have both ethical and evil aspects. Sexual pleasure is supportive of the physical and mental well-being of the individual and of the requirements of the species for reproduction. It is one of the necessities of life itself. Yet sexual activity that disregards the ethical requirements for safety and balance can destroy more than pleasure and well-being. As the AIDS epidemic illustrates, one’s own life can be at stake. Thus here, too, this ethical model is consistent with life experience.

Ethical action is not defined by the side of the teeter-totter to which it is applied. Ethical action is defined by the resulting motion toward balance. It follows from a study of the model that determining correct (ethical) action is not merely a matter of following a rule. Correct action requires consideration of each situation. Where must the action be applied to restore balance? How much is necessary?

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What then of evil? How does the model explain the often overwhelming and autonomous force of evil that seems present in terrorism, for example, or history’s pograms, or war’s atrocities? On the individual level, how do we explain such evil as drives the serial killer? Those questions are indeed difficult. It is here that we require further precision in defining evil, and further consideration of the psychological dimensions of the problem.

In Wholeness and Ethic we illustrated Jung’s model of the psyche as a noctiluca organism, and discussed the shadow as a “black hole” which draws energy from the ego and from the self. Of course, the metaphor is not astronomically correct, for no energy escapes a black hole. The energy stored in the shadow, however, may be thrust back through the ego and onto others, projecting its identity as not one’s own, but as belonging to others. Thus one’s own inadequacies may be seen in other people, as though a magic mirror made one look like another person. One’s own darkness is the source of racial bigotry and hatred.

The concept of the shadow is so central to our understanding of evil that an extended quotation from Jung is justified:

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance.

… closer examination of the dark characteristics — that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow — reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality. …

Although with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. (7)

Evil originates in these considerably powerful energies within the unconscious. As far as the ethical model is concerned, at the unconscious level these energies are only potential energies, which, while still under some degree of regulation within the psyche, may be channelled toward either evil or ethical actions. (As far as the psyche is concerned, the energies are not potential, but are actively engaged with other complexes under the influence of the self, seeking homeostatic balance.)

At the conscious level, energy that otherwise might be destructive or disruptive may be channelled into some action that is acceptable in the social group. Or, the energy may emerge destructively; through projection, the person may then blame the victim as being the cause of the impulse or “need” to “retaliate.” Nor is the effect confined to the immediate person and the victim. The effect may be felt in the collective conscious, where in the aggregate the evil looms as an autonomous “external” force that possesses not only individuals, but groups — sometimes even nations.

Psychic energy does not become evil or ethical until it reaches the action level, or rather, the level of decision about action. As affirmed in the story of Adam and Eve, it is the ego that is the seat of knowledge of good and evil. Ultimately, the decision to act ethically or evily is a function of consciousness. Even though the person may be reacting to feelings that arise in unconscious energies, it is the conscious that bears the guilt for an evil deed. Thus, though the energy for evil arises in the natural processes of the psyche, humans are not by nature evil, nor is nature evil.

It is not appropriate to classify feelings as evil or good, or even as evil versus ethical. Feelings are normal, resulting from the state of psychic regulation. Feelings are symptomatic of that state of regulation, but do not in themselves indicate that a person is good or bad. The person concerned about the quality of feelings must consider that all types of feelings are important in the psyche’s economic balance sheet. The test of the ethical versus the evil must be applied to actions (including proposed actions), not to feelings.

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This ethical model, empirically based on a natural systems worldview, offers several theoretical benefits. It provides a working explanation of the phenomenon of evil, while avoiding the philosophical problem of a dualistic universe. There is no evidence that the universe is dualistic. Certainly we see dualisms and polarizations at work in the universe, but the Universe is a Unity.

The model also avoids the problem of whether evil must be contained within the good. It deals appropriately with Jung’s arguments about the archetypal dualisms observed within the psyche, while preserving some of the attractiveness of the privatio boni doctrine. Indeed, in our ordinary daily experience we find almost overwhelming evidence of a deprivation of the good, which all normal human aspiration begs to redress.

Further, the model offers the benefit of a more useful perspective from which to understand and deal with urgent human problems. The model makes clear that evil is a matter of consciousness. Defusing evil within ourselves is a matter of increasing consciousness, to include awareness of our own shadows. In Jungian terms, we each must “own our own shadow.” A collective withdrawing of projections, each of us dealing with our own feelings, would in the aggregate massively lower the aggression level. For starters, it would defuse racial and religious bigotry.

The model further illustrates that the balance (the Good) can never be achieved by evil actions. Evil must always be countered by the ethical. Obviously, complex situations require considerable analysis, and often require ethical actions at multiple levels simultaneously. Success in a particular situation may require quite a protracted process of ethical interactions, great patience, collective awareness and collective action, yet no matter how unbalanced the situation or the system, redress can never be achieved by more evil.

Obviously, we face a difficult task, as Jung’s comments above affirm. The approach to ethics is the approach to awareness. Ethical action requires “thinking sincerely,” and requires acting in awareness of one’s own self as well as of the external situation. Just as increasing one’s base of knowledge is a matter of education, so is learning to increase consciousness. That education must start with an adequate model for teaching. We must start with a model of the Good as balance, and of homeostasis as health. We must start with a model of ethics for healing. 

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Reverence for Life and Natural Ethic

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) RABBI KUSHNER — Harold Kushner. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.

(2) PRIVATIO BONI — For an overview, see: John A. Sanford. “The Ontology of Evil” in Evil, The Shadow Side of Reality. New York: Crossroad, 1986.

(3) GOD AS NEUTRAL — See Sanford (op. cit.) for review of Jung’s thought on the subject, and bibliography. — See also CGJ. Introduction (1952) to Victor White: God and the Unconscious. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1982. — Also CGJ. “Prefatory Note” (1956) added to “Answer to Job” (1952). PJ, p 519. CW 11. — [The word morally (neutral) is added for this internet edition. Moral responsibility derives from ordinary ego-consciousness (derived from sensation of the physical world), which is a property of humanity, not divinity. In Answer to Job, Jung interprets the dialog between Job and Jahweh as a dialog between consciousness and the collective unconscious.]

(4) NATURAL VERSUS SUPERNATURAL — [I ask the reader to understand that I am not arguing for a devaluation of the supernatural or spiritual view of life (far from it !!), but in favor of a much richer and broader concept of what is "natural." Since physics now points to a nonlocal realm, the formerly easy divide between physical and metaphysical has become much blurred. My theological position, that the natural and supernatural realms inhere within each other in a paradoxical and mystical way, is explored in my website Pleromatics Project. Note, however, that this systems approach to ethics is not derived from theological argument.]

(5) THE PROBLEM OF EVIL — [Having now given more thought to the nature of nonlocality in the Pleromatics Project (leading to a proposal for a pulsed nonlocality model of reality), I can see the outlines of a karma-like collective "pressure" toward evil, which could increase the potential for evil action by unwary (i.e. less-conscious) egos. Such "pressure" would be in tension with the (unconscious) "collective karma" of moral (conscious) intention. (To borrow the term karma is not to take a position on eastern doctrines regarding reincarnation or metaphysical merit.)]

(6) NATURALISTIC FALLACY — G. E. Moore. Principia Ethica, 1903. See G. W. Stroh. American Ethical Thought. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. p 175 ff. — [see also The Psychological Problem ]

(7) “THE SHADOW IS A MORAL PROBLEM” — CGJ. “Aion: Phenomenology of the Self” (1951). CW 9ii. PJ, p 145, 146. 

This is the fifteenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview 14) The Psychological Problem

Approaches to Natural Ethics

Donivan Bessinger, MD

In the approach to a natural ethic, we have quite properly first established a worldview which accords with the current evidence for reality. It would have been quite backwards to attempt to use some ethical rule as the basis for constructing the worldview. The point was well made by Dr. Bernard Towers, a professor of pediatrics and anatomy, in addressing a conference whose theme was “Foundations of Ethics and its Relationship to Science: Values and the Biomedical Sciences.”

The very title of the present meeting … appears to suggest that the appropriate mode is, first to establish the metaphysical bases of ethical theory, and then to see how that theory, or those theories, should be applied to the theory and practice of science and medicine. I shall argue that this is to put the cart before the horse. Just as Aristotle’s physics necessarily antedated and was logically prior to his metaphysics, so must modern science (and in particular the science of biological evolution) lay the groundwork for, and establish the mode of, modern ethics. (1)

Having thus laid the groundwork, we turn to a consideration of natural ethic. Though a natural ethic is grounded in all reality, most of the major lessons are derived from a study of life systems. Let us review those lessons:

(1) The universe with all of its subsystems is highly interactive. These interactions are manifest in many levels, and no subsystem can be understood without reference to at least the level below and the level above the reference level.

(2) Life is ordered toward the survival of the individual and the species. Meeting the survival needs of individuals and species is the primary ethical consideration. Life has needs which must be met. Natural ethics must affirm that there are not merely oughts; there are also ethical musts.

(3) Life-forms interact in a niche, that is, they must assume a functional position in the environment, contributing to and depending on, other life. No life can exist apart from other life. In the chain of life, all forms of life have value. No life is less important than an individual link in a chain.

(4) Life systems, and all other systems in the universe, function toward balance, not towards “perfection” (as that word is commonly used). This homeostatic principle is the major ordering force in all self-sustaining systems. Survival requires that excesses must be negated or moderated.

(5) All systems are evolutionary, tending toward the emergence of new form and function. That is not to say that life systems affirm a philosophy of social progress. Rather, it says that existence is a state not of being, but of becoming.

(6) Life is limited in its individual aspect. Death is a normal part of individual life. This lesson is especially pertinent to medical practice. Medicine does not give life; life is the given in which medical (and all other) practice functions. Ethical actions may only help restore life’s own balance, but are ultimately limited in the ability to do so.

(7) Life requires the conjoining of both generative (male) and nurturing (female) creative functions. The conjoining must occur organically as the reproducing function within all sexual species. However, human survival also requires creativity in the maintaining and the fulfilling functions, such as the care of young, the ordering and promulgation of knowledge and its products, and the maintenance of the human spirit of awareness and inquiry. In that creativity too, all aspects of masculine and feminine expression must be balanced. Neither male nor female function can be deemed dominant or preferred.

(8) Where consciousness is sufficiently developed to permit willful action, consciousness carries the potential to negate unconscious homeostatic regulation. Survival requires the orderly functioning of consciousness. Homeostasis of the conscious domain must be imposed by conscious will.

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It is also pertinent to the development of a natural ethic to consider whether it is by nature that many humans act brutally, aggressively, and destructively. If that be so, we need pursue our case no further. If nature is anti-ethical, philosophy must let each tribe find its authority in force itself, and adapt as best it can. Indeed, there are elements in conventional philosophy which already have led us well along that road. Yet further examination yields considerable evidence that humans and other life by nature operate to affirm life values.

Many traditional rules of behavior (rules of ethics), handed down in ancient written and oral traditions, have their origins in primitive understandings of life needs. For example, the origins of the proscription against eating pork in Judaism and Islam are complex, and may well have resulted from both mythic and practical influences. Nevertheless, historically it protected against trichinosis or other parasitic infestations common in improperly cooked pork. Later, even after advances in food preparation made the rules no longer necessary to serve biological survival, the rules continue symbolically to provide cultural identification and foster cohesiveness for social survival. It is likely that many other ritual practices have had similar origins.

Historically, social development has required an ethical order oriented toward the survival of individuals as well as society. In modern Western culture, the major influence for such an ethical order is traceable to the Ten Commandments recorded by Moses. German ethologist Wolfgang Wickler has pointed to the high degree of correspondence between these Mosaic commandments and earlier ones in the Egyptian New Kingdom (sixteenth to twelfth centuries BCE). It is interesting that the Masai people of East Africa had a quite similar formulation of ten laws, and a tradition that they were given on a mountain. (2)

Are there life-lessons to be derived from even more ancient stages of mankind’s development? The evidence from prehominids is fossil evidence, and bones tell little of behavior, ethical or otherwise. Any anthropological lessons about early ethics must be gleaned from studies of primitive communities of homo sapiens, not from prehominids.

Even though an occasional skull bone may show evidence of injuries, fossil evidence cannot reliably tell the full story of the incidents which led to the injury. Nevertheless, Konrad Lorenz (3) uses such evidence to advance the argument of natural human aggressiveness. Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin reply:

We emphatically reject this conventional wisdom for three reasons: first, on the very general premise that no theory of human nature can be so firmly proved as its proponents imply; second, that much of the evidence used to erect this aggression theory is simply not relevant to human behavior; and last, the clues that do impinge on the basic elements of human nature argue much more persuasively that we are a cooperative rather than an aggressive animal. (4)

As Leakey and Lewin argue, if such aggressiveness were indeed instinctual in humans, aggressiveness would be demonstrable universally. Yet each example of tribal aggressiveness can be matched by examples of many other tribes which demonstrate the contrary point. In many cultures, aggressiveness is diffused through ritual behavior. (That is stronger evidence for an ethical imperative to diffuse destructiveness, than for innate aggressiveness.) They also argue that such an aggressive instinct would have been non-adaptive, working against human evolution to its present state. They also feel that human behavior is conditioned more by culture than by inheritance.

Humans are not innately disposed powerfully either to aggression or to peace. It is culture that largely weaves the patterns in human societies. (5)

That statement does not take into full account the dynamics of the human psyche or more recent research affirming the importance of the genetic component in human behavior. Jung’s theory of archetypes also affirms the substantial role of inherited elements in the operation of the unconscious, and gives us a more powerful argument against an inherent aggressiveness of mankind. The human psyche is ordered toward a healthy balance of its internal forces.

In his landmark study of human destructiveness, (6)  Erich Fromm provides a detailed rebuttal of Lorenz’ ideas, as well as of the Watson-Skinner theories of culturally engineered behavior. Fromm acknowledges the benign aggression which normally and naturally provides the organism, human and otherwise, with the necessary assertiveness to meet its needs for survival.

Wanton and brutal malignant aggression however, which is distinctively human, is presented as a disease state: a characterilogical defect associated with narcissism, sadism, and necrophilia, exemplified in the psyches of Himmler, Stalin, and Hitler. In Jungian terms, such malignant aggression derives its power from the ego-shadow axis which is energized when the ego fails in its ethical imperative to make peace within the self and in relationship to others.

That failure may well occur within a diseased social environment, and society bears a responsibility to work toward balanced social systems and to insure an ethical education for its members. However, the existence of a diseased environment does not inevitably result in malignant aggression, and brutal behavior may occur in persons whose material circumstances are to all outward appearances favorable. Malignant aggression is a “spritual” disease, and not a normal human condition at all.

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Arguments in support of a natural ethic have also been sought in comparative studies of animal behavior. In his ethological approach to ethics, Wickler (7) has looked for evidence of the operation of the principles of the Ten Commandments within animal societies. As he emphasizes, tracing such principles back to animal communities does not mean that such principles descended from animals. However, finding such principles in operation would help answer our question: Does a natural ethic operate unconsciously in nature.

Thou shalt not kill is subject to some interpretation, for we must define what we must not kill. All life is dependant on other life, and most animals must prey in some way on other life, whether they eat meat or plants. However, in non-humans, such predation is generally limited to that necessary for the predator’s survival. That is true even for the animals we (erroneously) consider to be “aggressive beasts”: wolf and lion. Natural instincts are ordered toward efficiency for survival, not aggressiveness.

Thou shalt not bear false witness. Integrity of information is critical to the survival process at many levels. Reproduction (indeed, the entire process of evolution) requires a high degree of accuracy in the replication of genes. Further, animal societies require warning systems which must also operate accurately and reliably, lest warnings come to be ignored.

Wickler gives various examples of “unethical behavior” of animals. For example, foxes have been observed both “lying” and “stealing” by giving a false alarm to frighten away other foxes (cubs of their own group) who were eating, then taking the prey for themselves. (8)

Thou shalt not steal. While animals do not own property in the ordinary human sense, there are many situations which indicate that property is claimed as one’s own. Chimpanzees behave as if they acknowledge that the hunter’s catch is his own, yet the hunter may nevertheless share the catch. Australian zebra finches regularly take abandoned nests, but avoid those with eggs of other birds. (9)

Honor thy father and thy mother is ordinarily presented as the commandment directed to children. Certainly in animal society too, obedience to parents while maturing and learning supports survival. Wickler reports an interesting observation of honoring the elders of the hierarchical baboon society. The “retired” elders (who hold the highest rank) will lead the way when the titular leader seems baffled in unfamiliar situations. (10)

The elders are the repository of accumulated wisdom of the tribe. In modern society, that repository of wisdom has been called the noosphere. (11) Perhaps this commandment includes the meaning, honor wisdom.

These various examples indicate that ethics-like behavior occurs in at least some animal societies. In animal society, we may consider “unethical behavior” as actions which are detrimental to other individuals and to the structure of the society. Such actions must somehow be regulated if they are not to become dominant and destroy the life of the society. Wickler’s evidence, and the fact that animal societies flourish, show that “ethical” regulation occurs. It is that principle of regulation which we call the natural ethic. 

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Good, Ethics, and Evil

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1) ”THE VERY TITLE OF THIS PRESENT MEETING” — Bernard Towers. “Toward an Evolutionary Ethic.” Teilhard Review, October 1977. p 80.

(2 ) MASAI FORMULATION OF TEN LAWS — Wolfgang Wickler. The Biology of the Ten Commandments (Munich, 1971). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. p 43 f.

(3) ARGUMENT OF NATURAL HUMAN AGGRESSIVENESS — Konrad Lorenz. On Aggression. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1966.

(4) “WE EMPHATICALLY REJECT THIS” — Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin. Origins. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977. p 208.

(5) “HUMANS ARE NOT INNATELY DISPOSED” — ibid. p 213.

(6) STUDY OF HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS — Erich Fromm. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Holt Rhinehart Winston, 1973.

(7) COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR — Wickler. op. cit. p 114

(8) `UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR’ OF ANIMALS — [Observing apparently intentionally deceitful behavior in animals raises the very interesting question of the extent to which they have a differentiated (even though primitive) ego-consciousness.]

(9) AUSTRALIAN ZEBRA FINCHES — ibid. pp 122-123.

(10) HIERARCHICAL BABOON SOCIETY — ibid. p 160.

(11) NOOSPHERE — Teilhard de Chardin. See Wholeness and Ethic, The Collective Conscious.

This is the fourteenth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics 4) Self View and Ethics 5) World as System 6) The Material Cosmos 7) Biological Systems Human Systems 9) Psyche as System 10) The Collective Unconscious 11) The Collective Conscious 12) Emerging From Chaos 13) The Emerging Worldview

I swear by Apollo Physician … that I will carry out, according to my ability, this oath … I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art… And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession … if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets …

– Hippocrates

The Psychological Problem

Donivan Bessinger, MD

For approximately twenty three centuries, the Physician’s Oath of Hippocrates (460 – 377 BCE) has stood as a major symbol of the ethical commitment of the healing profession. As other professions have developed, they too have devised codes of rules which guide the teaching of initiates, and which govern members of the profession in their daily work. Such rules are commonly understood to be the ethics of the profession. In society generally we expect conduct to be governed by codes of law, so that in common parlance, the word ethics seems to apply only to the relatively narrow scope of the problems of a particular profession.

Such a code of rules for only one profession must consider a wide range of ideas. For example, the committee which devises the rules must consider the general philosophic and religious ideas in the culture, as well as the laws, economics, and social structure of the society. It must consider the base of knowledge with which the profession deals, that is, its science. It must consider the capabilities of the tools with which it works, that is, its technology.

If the rules are to be accepted as applicable, they must appeal to a consensus of the whole professional group involved. There must be some general agreement on principle, or set of principles, which cause the stated problem to be answered a particular way. Further, such rules must be reviewed regularly, and are subject to frequent change in a changing world. The Oath of Hippocrates above included a rule against “cutting for stone” and a rule against abortion. Now of course, there are many instances in which not “cutting for stone” would violate the rule against injury, for science and technology have made operations for gallstones and urinary stones the preferred method of minimizing pain and further injury for many patients.

Practice has also changed with respect to abortion. Even though science and technology have certainly made abortion safer for the mother than in Hippocrates’ day, nothing has changed the issue of the taking of the fetal life. The major determinant of change in abortion ethics has been change in the social and legal climate of medical practice. In the United States, the philosophic and social diversity is so great, and society so angrily divided, that the medical profession has virtually abandoned abortion as an ethical issue. It now says, in effect, that with respect to this difficult issue ethics sets no higher standard than the law. In the absence of a consensus on principle, no ethical code of rules can long stand.

Certainly, when dealing with small homogeneous groups and with easily-stated problems, simple rules may suffice. If all of the group adheres to the same religion, one may simplify the problem by citing religious authority as ethical authority. But in a pluralistic society, and certainly at the global level, we must deal with many differences. Would not ethics demand, at a minimum, that we avoid cultural and religious bias?

How then, at the societal level and especially at the global level, can ethics help us? If ethics is based on rules, and if ethical rules are so variable and so subject to the whims of consensus, we can expect little help with the complexities of constantly varying large-system problems.

The answer of course is that ethics is not rules. Rules, after all, are only another form of law, subject to another level of enforcement. Ethics is the study of “What ought we to do?” Ethics is the inquiry into “How should we live?” at all levels of action in global society. If there are to be rules, ethics is the study of the principles behind the rules. Granted, ethics is a study. It is a branch of philosophy, an academic enterprise. Many in the world outside of academia think of ethics as an ivory tower diversion. There is an vast difference between study and the broad idea that ethics is the complete enterprise of making correct decisions.

If that is what ethics is, is not ethics too broad a subject to be manageable? Making correct decisions involves knowing what the problem is, knowing what the options are, knowing what the effects of each option would be, and then trying to figure out which option is best. And of course, complex problems confront us with complex options. If ethics is defined that broadly, is it defined at all?

Well, the world is complex. The problems we face, individually and collectively, have many facets. The problems occur at many levels, and often appear at many levels at the same time. We usually don’t know what all the effects of each option would be. Often the effects appear at some entirely different level. Often we cannot know which option is best. If we try to solve the problem a part at a time, we usually loose sight of the problem as a whole. We end up in an attitude of frustration and usually defeat.

Faced with these many dilemmas, we have tried to evolve a small set of principles on which there is broad consensus, then try to apply the principles rationally and sequentially, perhaps by some sort of algorithm, a heuristic rule or decision at a time. These efforts are particularly prominent in current approaches to medical decision making, but are seen in other fields as well. In fact, the complexity of medical decision-making makes that a good model for the study and illustration of ethical decision-making generally. (1)

Among the commonly cited principles are autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficience, and justice. The principle of autonomy directs that one decide with a respect for the individual rights and independance of will of the other human beings involved. Non-maleficence directs that we avoid injury in what we do. Beneficence directs that we seek actions that bring benefit. Justice directs that we seek to be fair and even-handed in our dealings with others.

We are still left with many questions. How many other human beings must be respected and consulted? When obtaining benefit requires some measure of injury, what then? And what of justice? When resources are limited, what are the limits of our even-handedness? Has life ever been fair?

And more to the point: What more-basic principle brings us to these? Do we not indeed need to find some unifying idea? By what idea shall we live? Despite the philosophical difficulties, do we not need to define a natural ethic, an ethic built into nature? Is ethics perhaps as much a matter of attitude and understanding as of rules and principles?

A search for a unifying idea is hampered by our general reliance on a principle of tolerance. It has become fashionable to think that any idea is acceptable if one is sincere. Making distinctions has often been confused with being intolerant. It is also fashionable to think that ideas cannot be held to be wrong since they cannot be tested objectively against some standard that everyone agrees to.

Yet it should be obvious that ideas do have survival value. Since one acts according to one’s thoughts, what one thinks may save or kill. Word is deed. Though an individual person’s thought and act may be inconsequential, the summation of collective thought is very much of concern for the survival of civilization, as the current nuclear fear so pointedly shows. Thus while we must be tolerant of people, we may not be tolerant of all ideas.

But what is the operative force in selecting ideas for affirmation in society? We must tolerate a variety of ideas if we are to generate new ideas to solve new problems. One cannot have life without new problems. But if we are to have civilization, we must rigorously select the ideas which are to be affirmed. What is a reliable process for that?

Censorship is undesirable. Censorship, or any suppression of creativity, is even contrary to society’s survival interests. The process of affirmation of survival ideas must be dispersed throughout society. There must be an operative ethical process that is reflected in decisions and affirmations at every level of choice. That of course requires some sort of consensus, and that consensus is difficult to come by.

The traditional formulation of the ethical problem asks simply “How should we live?” Since right action is action in service of the Good, the classical point of departure for ethics is to define the Good. For example, Aristotle begins his Ethics with a definition of the Good, and then develops the point that it is Happiness which is the Good.

It is thought that every activity, artistic or scientific, in fact every deliberate action of pursuit, has for its object the attainment of some good. We may therefore assent to the view which has been expressed that the good is that at which all things aim. (2)

Happiness then, the end to which all our conscious acts are directed, is found to be something final and self-sufficient. (3)

However, Aristotle finds that the end of activities (“that at which all things aim”) is defined differently in the various enterprises in society. He gives several examples: “The end of medical science is health; of military science, victory; of economic science, wealth,” and of course, other personal and collective enterprises have other ends. (4)

However, in seeking the happiness that comes from achieving the various ends, one must be moderate. Temptations to excess must be adapted to a consciously determined golden mean. In considering ethical regulation in accord with a golden mean, Aristotle affirms an ideal much like homeostasis. In that sense, he has appealed to a natural element in ethics, but his golden mean operates in consciousness, and achievement of excellence or virtue in Aristotle’s system is not attained through application of external principle. (5)

As interpreted by Durant, Aristotle holds that “Virtue … is not the possession of the simple man, nor the gift of innocent intent, but the achievement of experience in the fully developed man.” (6)Appealing solely to individual conscious formulation and to gained experience presents problems both for the individual seeking ethical guidance and for society in seeking to educate its youth in ethical principles.

In the history of philosophy, various ethical tests have been proposed. For example, Confucius taught that one must avoid doing unto others what one does not want done unto oneself. Since he defined it as a principle of reciprocity, he intended it as a bilateral rule enjoining each party to operate in the interest of the other. Equally ancient is the Jainist principle of ahimsa, or non-violence to all life, a theme taken up in modern times by Gandhi, with momentous political result. Jesus, in his Great Commandment, presented a test of personal relatedness: In addition to loving God (and deriving from that), one must love one’s neighbor as one’s own self.

Kant, in his categorical imperative, presented a test of universality: One must act as if the act would become a universal law. Bentham offered the test of utility: One must act to provide the greatest good (happiness) to the greatest number.

Modern writers have offered additional tests. Writing about the ethics of justice, John Rawls spoke of the “veil of ignorance”: One must act evenhandedly as though unaware of the outcome on specific persons including oneself. He also offered a “maximin principle” of acting (in society) to maximize the benefit to those minimally advantaged. (7)  Biomedical ethicist Tristan Englehardt, though not seeking to elevate the idea to a principle, suggested a cosmological test of reason: Act as would a reasonable being anywhere in the cosmos. (8)

Though these tests do not carry equal weight, each may provide some guidance in deciding whether a proposed action is ethical. Yet it is not always clear which best applies to the situation at hand, and one can envision that in some situations the tests might be in conflict. In many situations, there will be considerable leeway in deciding which of several proposed actions is the best, and how much action is sufficient to its end.

In any test that might be applied, consciousness must test itself and apply strict standards of objectivity to itself, if the ethical result is to be achieved. Ethics is inescapably an ego activity, for it must seek to resolve questions by the logical formulations of reason, and the processes of reason are processes of consciousness. Reason traditionally devalues the subjective work of the unconscious world, especially with respect to the “spiritual” content of the unconscious psyche.

However, principles derived purely in consciousness and analyzed solely by abstract concepts of good (or for that matter, of virtue or value) do not serve well as ultimate guides to action, for both the originating principles and their regulation are derived in consciousness. That forces the conscious into a conflict of interest, writing the law by which it audits its own accounts — an unethical situation in virtually all systems of ethics.

The conscious is capricious. It can be deluded into defining the good in many ways, and the principles which it derives are subject to wide variations in interpretation in society. To say “Pursue your own values,” or even “choose your own test,” is hardly a definitive solution to global or individual ethical problems.

Ethics, then, must appeal to a principle operating beyond consciousness. However, the principle must be one of which the conscious may be made aware, for the principle must be applied to “every deliberate action of pursuit” (Aristotle), and rigorously tested not only for result but for its concordance with reality itself.

An ethical principle operating in nature outside of consciousness is by definition, unconscious. It is that world operating outside the influence and regulation of our normal human consciousness that we commonly call the natural world. It is a fundamental premise of our systems worldview that human consciousness and human functioning are themselves integral with the world, and are indivisibly one with “nature.”

However, there is a difficulty in attempting to base ethics on nature. Writing in 1903, British philosopher G. E. Moore cautioned about the naturalistic fallacy of saying that some particular quality (valued by the conscious) is Good because it occurs in nature. That is, we may not base ethics on some good merely because it is “natural” — that could, in fact, be a special case of the ego’s conflict of interest just mentioned. (9)

His point has been very influential in strongly suppressing attempts at naturalistic ethics. Indeed the trend in academic philosophy seems to have been toward the opposite pole of deriving “ethics without biology.” For example, in an essay of that name, Thomas Nagel writes:

If [ethics] is just a certain type of behavioral pattern or habit, accompanied by some emotional responses, then biological theories can be expected to teach us a great deal about it. But if it is a theoretical inquiry that can be approached by rational methods, and that has internal standards of justification and criticism, the attempt to understand it from outside by means of biology will be much less valuable. (10)

As we shall see, biological concepts must play a greater role in ethics than his essay admits. Biology is germane to ethics because biology is the science of life, and ethics lies at the heart of our survival.

Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.

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Next Chapter: Approaches to Natural Ethics

More by Donivan Bessinger, MD

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References:

(1)  HEURISTIC RULE OR DECISION — H. E. Pople, Jr. “Heuristic Methods for Imposing Structure on Ill-structured Problems: The Structuring of Medical Diagnostics. In Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, P. Szolovits, editor. Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.

(2) “IT IS THOUGHT THAT EVERY ACTIVITY” — Aristotle. Ethics. Bk 1. Chap 1. Translation of J. A. K. Thomson. Middlesex: Penguin Classics, 1953.

(3) “HAPPINESS THEN, THE END TO WHICH” — ibid. 1: 7.

(4) “THE END OF MEDICAL SCIENCE IS HEALTH” — ibid. 1: 1.

(5) GOLDEN MEAN — For an expanded discussion of these points see Will Durant. The Story of Philosophy. New York: Washington Square Press (Pocket Books), 1953. p 74-79.

(6) “VIRTUE IS NOT THE POSSESSION” — Durant. op. cit. p 75.

(7) JUSTICE; MAXIMIN PRINCIPLE — John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

(8) COSMOLOGICAL TEST — Tristan Englehardt: Foundations of Bioethics, page 45.

(9) NATURALISTIC FALLACY — G. E. Moore. Principia Ethica, 1903. See G. W. Stroh. American Ethical Thought. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. p 175 ff.

(10) “IF ETHICS IS JUST A CERTAIN TYPE” — Thomas Nagel. “Ethics without biology” in Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. p 142.