Moral Minimalism vs. the Way of Love

It’s only natural that we humans would seek to evade moral obligations in a variety of ways. After all, they’re irksome, they interfere with our plans and projects, and they may even require a large measure of personal sacrifice. So we rationalize, we make excuses and look for ways to get out of them. This is probably a universal human trait. And one of the easiest ways to avoid the guilt of unmet obligations is to simply deny that they are obligations at all.

So we trim our sails, we make hairsplitting distinctions and redefine our terms so as to make the impositions of morality seem less onerous. When faced with a demand to change our behavior in some way, we look for loopholes.

Examples abound. We are always looking for ways to shrink the circle of our moral concern, to exclude those who, for whatever reason, we deem not to have any claim on us. Critics of redistribution point out (rightly, I think) that many welfare programs have effects that are the opposite of what was intended. But then we are tempted to conclude that we therefore have no obligations to the poor. Much recent moral philosophy has been concerned with making distinctions between “persons” and “human beings” so that we have obligations to the former but none (or fewer) to the latter. This seems to justify withdrawing our moral concern from entire classes of human beings who fail to measure up to a certain standard of rationality or articulateness (standards devised by the rational and articulate). We question whether animal suffering “matters.” If they are unlike us in certain ways, maybe it’s okay to inflict pain on them for the sake of pleasure or convenience.

This is a fundamentally self-protective posture, and an understandable one. If my circle of concern opens indefinitely, where might the claims on my time and energy end? What if I have nothing left to keep for myself? How much will I have to sacrifice?

However understandable, though, I think this posture is a self-defeating one. We seek to reduce our moral obligations to a bare minimum, because we see it as an infringement on our freedom. But the need to protect the self and maintain its autonomy will always tempt us to constrict our circle of concern more and more. The love of other people and things might call for sacrifice at any time and restrict our freedom. So, to avoid this prospect, we have to qualify our attachment to what we love. And what we end up with is a self that is, to use Luther’s expression, “curved in on itself.”

Here’s how C.S. Lewis described the plight of such a self:

The taste for the other, that is, the very capacity for enjoying good, is quenched in him except in so far as his body still draws him into some rudimentary contact with an outer world. Death removes this last contact. He has his wish—to live wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell. (The Problem of Pain, p. 123)

The alternative is that “he who would save his life must lose it,” the paradoxical wisdom that we find our truest fulfillment in self-giving. This is not an idea confined to Christianity by any means, but it finds its clearest expression in the teachings and example of Christ. Resurrection and new life come only after the ordeal of Good Friday.

The idea is that, rather than the crouch of self-protection, our proper posture in the world is one of openness, arms outstretched (as on a cross). An ethic of generosity would gladly seek to expand our circle of concern. Rather than look for loopholes, it would give the other the benefit of the doubt. Not sure if animals suffer in the same way we do? Show compassion for them anyway! Can’t tell if a fetus is really a “person”? Why not protect it anyway? This view denies that life is, at bottom, a zero-sum game. Our flourishing is bound up with the flourishing of others, even if it may at times take the form of self-sacrifice. We don’t have to draw boundaries and limit our concern for others in order to protect ourselves.

I won’t pretend that such an ethic resolves all dilemmas. In a fallen world there will still be hard choices to be made, and painful sacrifices, ones that most of us would be extremely hesitant to make. For instance, what do we do when two genuine goods conflict? But it does help us to catch sight of our trajectory, to find the path, what Dorothy Day called “the way of Love” and the promise that our true fulfillment lies in following it.