The Phenomenology of Moral Agency in the Ethics of KE Løgstrup Simon Thornton A thesis ...

269 Pages·2017·1.95 MB·English

by  Simon Thornton

The Phenomenology of Moral Agency in the Ethics of
K. E. Løgstrup

Simon Thornton
A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D.

Department of Philosophy
University of Essex
October 2017
Preface: Løgstrup and the Phenomenology of Moral Agency .......................................... 1
0.1. St. Kevin and the Problem of Moral Agency.................................................................. 1
0.2. Introducing Løgstrup as a Phenomenologist and a Theologian ...................................... 3
0.3. Chapter Outline ......................................................................................................... 10
1. Løgstrup’s Ethics and the Question of Moral Agency ............................................. 15
1.1. The Standard View of Moral Agency ......................................................................... 16
1.2. A Preliminary Sketch of Løgstrup’s Phenomenology of Ethical Comportment ............... 23
1.3. The Question of Moral Agency for Løgstrup’s Ethics................................................... 33
1.4. Two Strategies for Defusing the Dilemma Raised by the Question of Moral Agency for
Løgstrup’s Ethics .................................................................................................................. 39
1.4.1. A Kantian Defusing Strategy ............................................................................. 39
1.4.2. An Aristotelian Defusing Strategy ...................................................................... 44
1.5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 48
2. Ontological Ethics: The Hermeneutics of Trust .......................................................... 50
2.1. Trust as a Sovereign Expression of Life: A Reconstruction................................................ 52
2.2. Immediacy and Moral Agency ......................................................................................... 69
2.3. Sovereign Expressions of Life as Hermeneutic Conditions ................................................. 77
2.3.1. Heidegger’s Ontological Phenomenology ................................................................... 79
2.3.2. Løgstrup’s Ontological Ethics ................................................................................... 86
2.4. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 98
3. Løgstrup’s Lutheran Dialectic ...................................................................................... 101
3.1. MacIntyre’s Critical Appropriation of Løgstrup ............................................................. 102
3.2. Via Purgativa: An Alternative Route? .......................................................................... 123
3.3. The Split-Self............................................................................................................... 137
3.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 147
4. The Self, the Sovereign Expressions of Life and Medio-passive Agency ............... 149
4.1. The Self and Agency in Løgstrup’s Ethics: Framing the Chapter ..................................... 150
4.2. Selfhood and Agency in Kierkegaard .............................................................................. 154
4.3. Løgstrup and Kierkegaard: Controversion and/or Appropriation? .................................. 166
4.4. The Sovereign Expressions of Life and Medio-Passive Agency ....................................... 185
4.4.1. Medio-Passivity ......................................................................................................... 187
4.4.2. The Self, the Sovereign Expressions of Life and Medio-Passive Agency .................... 202
4.5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 206
5. Defending Løgstrupian Moral Agency: Between Radical Passivity and Moral
Negativism ........................................................................................................................... 208
5.1. Is Løgstrupian Moral Agency Plausible? ........................................................................ 209
5.2. Too Much Activity? A Levinas-style Objection ............................................................... 219
5.3. Too Much Passivity? An Adorno-style Objection ............................................................ 232
5.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 251
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 253
Dedicated to the memory of John Thornton, my father (1952-2017).
Abstract
Many philosophers hold that moral agency is defined by an agent’s capacity for
rational reflection and self-governance. It is only through the exercise of such
capacities, these philosophers contend, that one’s actions can be judged to be of
distinctively moral value. The moral phenomenology of the Danish philosopher and
theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905-1981), currently enjoying a revival of interest
amongst Anglo-American moral philosophers, is an exception to this view. Under the
auspices of his signature theory of the ‘sovereign expressions of life,’ Løgstrup
provides a rich moral phenomenology aimed at establishing the ethical value of
‘spontaneous,’ non-deliberative actions, such as those exemplified in the showing of
trust and acts of mercy. In this thesis, my aim is to investigate what mode of moral
agency, if any, is compatible with Løgstrup’s phenomenology of the sovereign
expressions of life. I argue that Løgstrup’s moral phenomenology is compatible with
a distinctive medio-passive mode of agency. According to this conception of moral
agency, the subject’s agency is constituted not through her capacity to stand back and
make a judgment on how to act, but rather in the way the subject comports herself in
relation to situations and encounters that are experienced first-personally as
overwhelming and encompassing. I will proceed by providing detailed analyses of the
core aspects of Løgstrup’s moral phenomenology and his theory of the sovereign
expressions of life. In the process, I will elucidate the decisive influence that thinkers
such as Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard had on Løgstrup’s
way of thinking about ethics. Thus, in this thesis my aim is to contribute both to
Løgstrup scholarship and to central on-going debates in moral philosophy and the
philosophy of action.

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Preface: Løgstrup and the Phenomenology of Moral
Agency
0.1. St. Kevin and the Problem of Moral Agency
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
*
And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,
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A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.
(Heaney 1998: 410-11)

Seamus Heaney’s meditation on the traditional story of St. Kevin and the
blackbird presents a powerful image: an ascetic monk who, upon becoming the nesting
place for a blackbird and her chicks, maintains prayerful posture for weeks on end,
through rain and beating sun. St. Kevin is moved by pity; his actions, in the language
of the Christian tradition from which the story is drawn, are expressive of agapic love.
That is, a love of God for man and of man for God, extended to a love of all creation.1
Heaney meditates on St. Kevin’s posture, wondering: is his pose effortful and
deliberate? Or is he self-forgetful; a conduit ‘mirrored clear in love’s deep river?’ Is St.
Kevin’s posture active? Is it a posture he is trying to keep, for the sake of the blackbird
and for the sake of God? Or, is he passive? Has he been overcome by some beatific
peace and dissolved into ‘the network of eternal life’?
These are not idle questions. Agapic love is a regulative ideal in Christian
ethics. And, more generally, the image of spontaneous other-regarding care serves as
a powerful ethical ideal across many cultures and moral philosophies: selflessness and
altruism are often seen to be of superior ethical value to ratiocinative and calculated
action. And this estimation attaches to the mundane just as much as it does to the

1 Cf. Augustine’s canonical definition: ‘All the commandments of God, then, are embraced in love, of
which the apostle says: ‘now the end of the commandment is charity, out of pure heart, and of a
good conscience, and of faith unfeigned’ [1 Tim 15]. […] But whatever is done either through fear of
punishment or from some other carnal motive, and has not for its principle that love which the spirit
of God sheds abroad the heart, is not done as it ought to be done, however it may appear to men. For
this love embraces both the love of God and the love of our neighbour […]. And this applies both to
present and future. We love God now by faith, then we shall love him through sight’ (Augustine 1996:
139-140).
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extraordinary; to one’s spontaneous showing of trust to a stranger just as to St.
Kevin’s sanctified self-sacrifice. Importantly, Heaney’s question is not why agapic love
is so highly esteemed – although this is itself an interesting and worthy question –
but rather how such love is manifest. This latter question presents a powerful
philosophical puzzle. For, agapic love and its secular counterparts occupy a curious
status when considered as actions or the products of an agent. Consider, again, St.
Kevin’s pose. On the one hand, it seems that St. Kevin’s keeping himself in stasis is
something he did – and something he did for a good reason, namely, out of love for
creation. And yet, on the other hand, St. Kevin appears to be curiously passive in his
posture; he was, firstly, moved to pity – it is not something he chose. Moreover, he was
self-forgetful to the point where even the motivating reason of love had been forgotten.
Importantly, this passivity and selflessness, this sense of being overwhelmed or
encompassed by the needs of another seems to be constitutive of what we think of
when we think of agapic or selfless actions. Yet, how, if at all, can we capture this
puzzling and delicate class of action in terms of a conception of moral agency?
This question has no doubt been taken up by countless theologians and
philosophers. However, it is to the little-known Danish philosopher and theologian
Knud Eljer Løgstrup (1905-1981) that I turn to in this thesis. In his later philosophy,
under the auspices of his theory of the sovereign expressions of life, Løgstrup has
provided a rich and expansive – if unfinished – phenomenology of spontaneous moral
acts; of the possibility of agapic love. Does Løgstrup’s moral phenomenology have the
resources to respond to Heaney’s queries?
0.2. Introducing Løgstrup as a Phenomenologist and a Theologian
Opening this thesis with a poem is not a matter of mere ornamentation: it is
motivated by Løgstrup’s own approach to moral philosophy. Løgstrup’s writings are
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replete with lengthy discussions of novels and imaginative fiction. In fact, appealing
to literary examples in elucidating his ideas was something of a methodological
principle for Løgstrup. As David Bugge notes, Løgstrup
saw literature as having an advantage or even precedence over psychology,
philosophy, and theology. Whereas these disciplines much too often tend to
become reductive, abstract, or even contrived, literature remains complex and
concrete. (Bugge 2017: 216)
More generally, Løgstrup’s ‘homiletic attention to the moral and religious
significance of everyday experiences’ (Dews 2017: 104) is one of the most striking
aspects of his philosophy. And it marks him out as a resolutely phenomenological
philosopher, in the broadest sense of that term. That is to say, Løgstrup’s way of
thinking about ethics is fastidious in its attempt to remain within the concrete
complexity of human life. And it is through his attempts to accommodate and disclose
ethical life in all its complexity, rather than attempting to construct a systematic
moral theory, that his appreciation of problems such as those raised in light of the
story of St. Kevin can be found.
Beyond this, however, a central interpretive claim of this study is that
Løgstrup is a phenomenologist in a more substantive sense as well. Løgstrup was
decisively influenced by the phenomenological tradition that emerged in the wake of
Edmund Husserl. In particular, he was greatly influenced by the work of Martin
Heidegger and Hans Lipps, under whom he studied during the first half of the 1930s.
The definition of phenomenology according to this tradition goes beyond rich
descriptions of what experiences are like, and is defined by an attempt to account for
the basic structures or the ‘essence’ of human experience and understanding from the
first-person perspective. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it:
Phenomenology is the study of essences, and it holds that all problems amount
to defining essences, such as the essence of perception or the essence of
consciousness. And yet phenomenology is also a philosophy that places