The Responsible Self

¶ … Christian Moral Philosophy, H. Richard Niebuhr takes a probing look at the characteristics of a moral life. So many times, people judge others as good or bad without examining the underlying characteristics of those judgments. However, Niebuhr rejects that idea. Instead, he goes beyond vague notions of good and bad and suggests that ethical behavior is inextricably intertwined with the concept of responsibility. Responsibility towards others is what guides people to engage in ethical ways. Moreover, to Niebuhr, this responsibility towards others does not imply any type of bondage. Instead, every individual has the freedom to act as he or she wants to act and the flexibility to respond in their own ways. Unethical people may act in ways that ignore their responsibilities towards others, while ethical people will respond in a way that demonstrates that concern for others guides their actions. In this way, Niebuhr seems to suggest that ethics cannot be defined by a narrow norm or code, because ethics are situational and responsive to the needs of people in every scenario. Therefore, the freedom and flexibility that permit people to act unethically in certain scenarios are actually necessary to give people the room to act ethically when faced with a new scenario.

At first blush, Niebuhr's discussion of Christian moral philosophy would appear to be somewhat deontological. After all, deontological ethics looks at rules and duties, and responsibility seems to be another word for duties. However, deontological ethics is much more circumscribed than Niebuhr's approach to Christian morality. Deontological ethics involves a broad range of different philosophical approaches, including moral absolutism, in which even the best outcome will not excuse a bad action. Not all deontological approaches are so rigid, but generally the rightness of an action, and whether that action adheres to the rules governing the actor's behavior, is what determines the ethics or morality of the behavior. Niebuhr does not suggest that ethical behavior is necessarily to be found in the willful disregard of all rules, but he also does not suggest that morality requires adherence to all rules. He refers to Aristotle when discussing responsibility and suggests that there is "a master art, whose end is the actualization of the good man and the good society, whose material is human life itself" (Niebuhr 1999, 49). Though he does not delve into an examination of moral issues like civil disobedience, there is an underlying acknowledgement that the responsible man, by striving to do the things he knows are right and to include acknowledgment of others in his calculations of right and wrong, may find himself in situations where he must have the flexibility to break rules.