“Den guddommeligt skønne natur”

The article offers a contribution to the understanding of K.E. Løgstrup’s metaphysics focusing on his reading of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry and Martin Heidegger’s interpretation thereof. Heideggerian ontology plays a crucial role in Løgstrup’s theology as a philosophical explication of the pre-understanding of Christian faith. At first, existential ontology was essential in this respect, but later Løgstrup realized the necessity of broadening the view to being in general, which equals the movement towards metaphysics. In this movement, Hölderlin as interpreted by Heidegger is pivotal, an important element being the “poetic openness” Løgstrup introduces in The Ethical Demand. In unpublished manuscripts, Løgstrup claims that poetic openness in Hölderlin has an ontological and metaphysical content, and his reading thereby anticipates central themes in his later metaphysics such as omnipresence, particularity, and the history-nature relation.

The Possibility/Impossibility of Ethical Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Philosophical Reflection

The outbreak of COVID-19 has raised a global concern and calls for an urgent response. During this perpetual time of epidemic crisis, philosophy has to stand on trial and provide a responsible justification for how it is still relevant and can be of used during this global crisis. In such a time of crisis like that of COVID-19, this paper offers a philosophical reflection from within the possibility/impossibility of community thinking in India, and the demand for an ethical responsivity and response-ability to act ethically towards the Other (autrui) to show that philosophy always already emerges from within the context of crisis. As an alternative outlook to the thinking of totalitarian singularity and individualism, community—in its possible and impossible making—can offer more meaningful engagement with the other human being by being responsible and extending care towards the Other. The thinking of a shared community life is the facticity of one’s own being-together-in-common without the dismissal of individual differences as can be seen in the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, and there is an ethical demand that comes from the face-to-face ethical relationship with the Other as argued by Emmanuel Levinas.

Humanisme Bagi Sesama – Menyingkap Akar Kekerasan Dalam Relasi Antarmanusia Dan Etika Tanggung Jawab Menurut Emmanuel Levinas

This article contains the most fundamental text of Emmanuel Levinas. His unique contribution is his argument that the morality is not a branch of philosophy, but first philosophy (TI 304). His starting point is the actual concrete encounter, with the “face” of the other, that underlies our sense of self and identity, and this, in turn is the beginning of Levinas’ understanding of what Philosophy is. Philosophy begins with the other and ethics is undertood as a relation of infinite responsibility to the other person. By this, he means that when we face someone, before we decide to respond others (to wish someone “great day”, to give or not to give money to a beggar), we are already put into a relationship with them. This is the reason why he calls that relationship ‘the original relation’. This unconditional responsibility is not something we take on or a rule by which we agree to be bound, it exists before us and we are ‘thrown’ into inexhaustible responsibility for them without any choice. Although his big idea is not adequate for the solution of all our ethical problems, we find the strength of Levinas’ position in reminding us to the nature of ethical demand, which must be presupposed at the basis of all moral theories.

Selvisk, uselvisk, Scheler, Løgstrup

It is often thought that the mark of the moral is unselfishness. It is also often said that Jesus preached an ideal of unselfishness so high as to be unfulfillable. The German philosopher Max Scheler disagreed on both counts. The idea that to be moral is to be unselfish is a modern idea, he says. It evolved with the idea that human beings are naturally selfish. Both ideas are wrong: unselfishness is not the essence of goodness, nor are human beings selfish by nature. This article discusses his arguments. It also briefly discusses the ideas of K.E. Løgstrup, who first introduced Scheler’s thought in Denmark. It is argued that Løgstrup’s thinking reflects that of Scheler, except that Løgstrup continued to revere the so-called “ethical demand” beyond what would be warranted in an ethical system like Scheler’s.

The Ethical Demand and the Sovereign Expressions of Life

Løgstrup introduces two key ethical concepts: the ethical demand and the sovereign expressions of life. Løgstrup argues that we know the truth of the commandment to love the neighbour not only from Jesus’s proclamation, but also from the basic conditions of our existence. He goes on to introduce the sovereign expressions of life, such as trust and compassion. These phenomena are part of human existence and enable life to flourish. Løgstrup suggests that only when these possibilities for the flourishing of life are prevented from being realized does the ethical demand arise that one now ought to do out of duty what one failed to do out of spontaneity. This leads him to discuss Nietzsche, agreeing with Nietzsche’s anthropological claims regarding human egoism, but criticizing him for not recognizing that this is due to our distortion of the sovereign expressions of life, which he illustrates with our distortion of trust.

The Ethical Demand and the Norms

In ‘The Ethical Demand and the Norms’, Løgstrup addresses the problem concerning relativity in ethics. He makes the claim that ethics involves both an unchanging and a relative and changeable element; the moral rules vary from time to time and in different cultures, whereas the fundamental element that one should be concerned for the well-being of the other is absolute and unchangeable. This leads Løgstrup to discuss the problem as to whether the Ten Commandments still hold good today, as they can reasonably be seen as part of the historical and thus relative moral rules of ethics rather than its unchangeable basis.

Ethical Concepts and Problems

This book concerns the nature of ethics and the relation between ethics and politics in the philosophy of Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup. In the book, Løgstrup argues that apart from deontology and teleology, there is a third main tradition within philosophical ethics, which he calls ontological ethics. According to Løgstrup, ontological ethics is rooted in the fundamental conditions of human life and is closely related to Martin Luther’s natural law ethics. Løgstrup sees the fundamental ethical relationship between humans as one of interdependence based on mutual vulnerability. In this respect, Løgstrup is reprising ideas from his earlier work The Ethical Demand (1956), where he introduced his ethical position. In the present book, Løgstrup connects his understanding of the ethical demand with his new key ethical conception of sovereign expressions of life, a concept he introduced a few years earlier in his 1968 Controverting Kierkegaard, but did not then discuss in relation to the ethical demand. Finally, Løgstrup also ventures into the area of political philosophy, discussing how it is possible to connect his own ontological ethics to politics.

The Absolute Demand of Concrete Existence

This chapter critiques Kierkegaard’s conception of the infinite demand. Kierkegaard’s demand remains abstract because he tries to derive content from form: namely, to derive its content from the fact that it is infinite, where this means that its aim is for the finite individual to know that they are nothing before God. But it is then impossible to treat this infinite demand as connecting to our relation with other people, and each involves radically different conceptions of guilt and responsibility. To avoid this problem, it is argued that we should think in terms of an ethical demand which remains between individuals, but which is also distinct from the social norms, as the person on whom the demand falls is ‘isolated’ and so must take individual responsibility for their response to the other, rather than merely following social norms and thereby being confined to life in the crowd.