The ethical ethicist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The problem at the bottom of ethics; the ultimate and penultimate

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1932 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

– 8 minute read time –

A 2014 study published in Philosophical Psychology asked whether ethicists were, on average, more ethical. The results were mixed, but broadly speaking, they concluded professors of ethics were not more ethical than the general population. That’s disconcerting.

Maybe, we should start backwards—find someone good and see what they come up with regarding ethics. Here, we encounter our first problem: According to our cynical age, good people don’t really exist. 

While everyone fails, some do an exemplary job of standing against the evils of their time and who, additionally, don’t fail in an outstanding, repugnant way. This qualifies countless quiet, everyday folks lost to memory, but it also includes some famous moral teachers. Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha), Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Gandhi, and many others qualify, but I want to focus on a German scholar named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The “Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”

Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian and, in my book, philosopher. Born to a wealthy, large, and well-connected family in 1906, Bonhoeffer enjoyed an intellectually stimulating childhood. His father was a brilliant psychiatrist, neurologist and, interestingly, an agnostic. His mother was a teacher and Christian, with renowned artists and theologians in her lineage. 

Bonhoeffer enjoyed a classical, well-rounded education. He composed songs at eleven and retained a passion for the piano his entire life. He quickly rose in the ranks of academia, graduating with a doctorate summa cum laude at the age of twenty-one. I recommend the exceptional biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy to anyone interested in his life (and you ought to be).

Now, I know what you’re thinking: A German academic born in the early 1900s who didn’t defect to America? Foreboding. Tread with caution.

As you likely guessed from the title of his biography, Bonhoeffer was not a Nazi. Instead, at multiple crossroads, he chose to stay in Germany to resist the Nazi infiltration in the German church. He refused a coveted academic position in the US in the ‘40s. Rather than accept an offer to study non-violent resistance with Gandhi in the ‘30s, he chose to live non-violent resistance. He joined an underground conspiracy against Hitler, helped Jews escape to Switzerland, and persistently, deceptively, and craftily undermined the Nazi infiltration into Lutheranism. 

So, I think we’ve found a pretty good person. Luckily for us, this acute scholar with breathtaking integrity wrote a magnum opus called Ethics (sadly unfinished). 

Let’s leave Bonhoeffer aside for a moment to consider a thorny philosophical dilemma he’ll aid in.

The problem at the bottom of ethics

I could talk about this dilemma in a myriad of ways, but, essentially, there is a problem in the “is” versus the “ought” in ethics (cf. David Hume). Maybe we could contrast the ideal and the deal (as in, “here’s the deal…”). 

Ethics seem to exist as an ideal rather than a description of what is in reality. With this understanding, a problem arises: where does the moral ideal “come from?” As far as I can tell, there are three main positions.

1. Ought does not exist; moral codes arise by chance and reduce to matters of taste, instinct, affect, or power. This is, roughly, called moral anti-realism. Hume and Nietzsche seem to be moral anti-realists of some kind.

2. Ought emerges from the natural world as an emergent property, like software from hardware. Adultery really is wrong, but only contingently upon the way social evolution selects for single mate partnership. Many popular thinkers like Jordan Peterson ascribe to this view.

3. Ought originates from outside the natural world, but still exists—morals are, but not in a material, physical way. Plato, for example, believed there were higher, transcendent forms that existed out of necessity, like goodness (or justice), truth, and beauty. Actions are morally good insofar as they participated, mysteriously, in goodness. Theists, Christians, believe that the “ought” originates, or co-eternally originates, with God.

Even on (3), a problem remains: how to apply a perfect standard in an imperfect world. There’s more than just an ontological problem here (i.e., how the moral “stuff” interacts with the physical “stuff”), there are infinite ethical problems left to unravel in action itself.

The ultimate and penultimate 

I might delve more into this problem in a later essay about “wisdom as ethics.” For now, I want to talk about Bonhoeffer again. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer uses two terms to discuss the two realms of ethics, the ideal and world, as the “ultimate” and “penultimate.”

In context, Bonhoeffer discusses the ultimate and penultimate through the lens of “justification,” a fancy theological term referring to the transference of goodness and rightness with God to undeserving humans. Before justification, everything goes through a penultimate phase—a journey toward the ultimate justification. Paul went through a period of persecuting Christians. The thief on the cross presumably, well, thieved. Both arrived at justification through different means. 

Now, the penultimate gains value only through the ultimate. “The penultimate… remains, even though the ultimate entirely annuls and invalidates it.” The ultimate brings with it a finality; there’s no going back. It is in a split moment, and, simultaneously, eternity, that God justifies. 

However, “the way from the penultimate to the ultimate can never be dispensed with,” because otherwise, grace would become “venal and cheap. It would not be a gift.” Indeed, “For the sake of the ultimate, the penultimate must be preserved.” 

So, we all must travel through the penultimate, hopefully, to the ultimate. This begs the question: If the realm of God, and all that is ideal, is the ultimate, how do we live in a penultimate reality in light of the ultimate? 

Radicalism and compromise

Bonhoeffer contrasts two extremes:

• Compromise is the “hatred” of the ultimate. This leads to a rejection of God’s judgement and his terminal, supreme, eternal moral wisdom.

• Radicalism sees the penultimate and ultimate as mutually exclusive and only knows the law, God’s judgement, and not his mercy. It knows no gray areas, only absolutes.

According to Bonhoeffer, compromise is an unacceptable extreme—far from a praiseworthy middle ground. He elaborates, 

“Radicalism hates time, and compromise hates eternity. Radicalism hates patience, and compromise hates decision. Radicalism hates wisdom, and compromise hates simplicity. Radicalism hates moderation and measure, and compromise hates the immeasurable. Radicalism hates the real, and compromise hates the word.” 

It’s clear to see that “both alike are opposed to Christ.” These two poles get some things right in their own way, and they’re useful categories in themselves.

But, what is the solution? Not striking a “middle ground,” for that is compromise. Rather, to Bonhoeffer, only Christ can be the solution to this profound impossibility, this paradox at the bottom of morality.

The third way, through Christocentrism

Jesus came into the world as a human, and only through his moral perfection and, yet, suffering, can the ideal (ultimate) and flawed (penultimate) be brought together. Upon Christ, the fullness of imperfection and the subsequent deserved judgement (ultimate) came to be in the world (penultimate). If it stopped there, the penultimate would overtake the ultimate—only through Jesus’s resurrection can the world (penultimate) be redeemed (ultimate).

It is in this way that I agree with Bonhoeffer that only through a “Christocentric” philosophy can we understand ethics as both in the world and yet, of something transcendent. Following the incarnation (the embodiment of God), death, and resurrection of Jesus, we can understand the gap between the ethicist’s actions and the ethics itself—anything else is a woefully incomplete picture. 

Without judgement, ethics collapses into an empty, “it is what it is.” Without humanity, without impossible ethical positions (like living as a German in 1940s Germany), there is no weight to goodness, nothing significant about redemption and grace.

So, how to act? 

First, follow Christ. 

Second, read Ethics with me, and consider reading about Bonhoeffer’s life. He spent his life dedicated to abstractly/theologically, and concretely, in action, weaving his way through unsolvable ethical dilemmas. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer expands on these two realities, the penultimate and ultimate, I can’t delve into it more now. But, chiefly, he lived this good, complex ethical vision—unto death. 

Bonhoeffer didn’t condemn his peers who went to fight in the war for Germany; he was privileged enough to put off conscription. But he also didn’t stay silent, he worked with co-conspirators to smuggle Jews and overthrow Hitler. He lied, many times, and would publicly heil Hitler for deception’s sake. He made friends with his captors. He fell in love and died while engaged to his young bride, yet he founded a monastic-inspired, underground seminary. He loved athletics, Ping-Pong, theater, and film, yet held to a (more or less) orthodox, Protestant view of Christianity.

Bonhoeffer never finished Ethics because his ethics put him in a Nazi prison, and later, a concentration camp, where he was executed by hanging at the age of 39. Bonhoeffer’s execution by the Nazi’s for his resistance is a kind of accolade, the sort of thing “treasure in heaven” refers to.

If we should listen to anyone about the ultimate and penultimate… well, it would be Christ himself, of course (cf. Matthew 5-7). 

But, maybe as a close second, we should listen to Bonhoeffer, the ethical ethicist.

Soli Deo Gloria

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This essay is dedicated to my good friend Cole Smith, who tells me the gap between the high standards of ethical philosophies and the impossibility of actually living them out troubles him. I hope you forgive any inaccuracies in my representation of the philosophy of ethics generally, and that this essay challenges you.

[Edit: I made two small changes for historical accuracy and clarity, 10/20/2024]