Ethics of Responsibility

The purpose of this essay is to engage Michael Fishbane’s reflections on the meaning and task of theological ethics. Fishbane’s lecture, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” published in this issue of the Journal of Religion, enacts a conception of theological ethics even if it seems to be presented without explicit definition or dialectically considering alternate conceptions. One task in engaging Fishbane’s work, then, is to tease out what he might mean by “theological ethics.” Accordingly, in this essay I am attempting to engage his argument in ways that illuminate agreements and disagreements about the meaning and task of theological ethics and also indicate where further reflection is needed. On my reading, theological ethics on Fishbane’s account entails a specific kind of experience of the vitality of life that is interpreted within vectors of reflection streaming out from the biblical texts and down through the rabbinic tradition. The focus of my reflections, accord- ingly, is on the connections among ontological, hermeneutical, and theo- logical reflection within an ethics of attunement.

For European literati of the early twentieth century, Fyodor Dostoevsky represented a mythically-Russian spirituality in contrast to a soulless, rationalized West. One such enthusiast was Georg Lukács, who in 1915 began a never-completed book about Dostoevsky's work a model of spiritual community that could redeem a fallen world. Though framing his analysis in the language and themes of broader Dostoevsky reception, Lukács used this idiom innovatively to go beyond the reactionary implications this model might connote. Highlighting similarities with Max Weber's account of political ethics, I argue that Lukács developed an ethic derived from his reading of Dostoevsky, which focused on the idea of a hero defined by an ability to resolve the specific ethical dilemma of adherence to duty and moral law on the one hand, and the need to restore spontaneous human community at a time when the social institutions embodying such laws had fallen into decay on the other. Crucially, he deployed the same framework after his conversion to Marxism to justify revolutionary terror. However different his position from Dostoevsky's, it was through engagement with these novels that Lukács not only clarified his thought but also came to identify Lenin as a Dostoevskyan hero figure.

This article identifies the assumption of responsibility as a basic need of human beings and applies the concept specifically to older people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. It suggests a two-level concept of responsibility, based on the approach of discourse ethicist Karl-Otto Apel, as a promising approach to recognizing human diversity while at the same time respecting people's equal rights to participate in discourse. This concept can serve as a theoretical starting point for the construction of individually adapted types of responsibility. Furthermore, the article describes practical ideas (primarily the practice of doll therapy) that can enable people with dementia or Alz-heimer's disease to assume responsibility. Direct communication and a reflective, sensitive consideration of each individual case are identified as important prerequisites for the inclusion of elderly people with dementia.