![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
My aim in this paper is to consider whether, by thinking of our ethical relation to one another in terms of vulnerability, we can better resolve the problem of overdemandingness – namely, that certain moral views and theories seem to require more of us than is reasonably acceptable. I will suggest that there is a way in which focusing on vulnerability, rather than merely needs or wants, can help address the issue of overdemandingness, largely because of the relational nature of vulnerability, and how this connects to our power over others. In arguing this case, I will draw on the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup. I explore how Løgstrup shows how this might work in relation to a central form of vulnerability which he emphasises, namely trust. I then consider an objection, namely that trust is a rather special case of vulnerability, which is less open to the problem of overdemandingness only because it has particular features which do not apply to vulnerability more generally. I then respond to this objection by considering if lessons learnt from the case of trust could still nonetheless be extended more widely to other forms of vulnerability. Doing so, I will suggest, might show how thinking in terms of vulnerability as Løgstrup conceives it can help us with the problem of overdemandingness
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Reasons of space preclude any detailed elaboration of the nature of this problem: for further discussion see Chappell (Citation2009) and van Ackeren and Kühler (Citation2016).
2. But cf. the title of the well-known Danish study of Løgstrup Jensen (Citation1994), which in English translation reads: Vulnerable Invulnerability: Løgstrup and the Return of Religion in Philosophy. For further discussion, see Pahuus (Citation2005).
3. Løgstrup does not actually use the term ‘interdependence’ until 1961, where he adopts it in Løgstrup (Citation1961) with reference to Theodor Geiger: see p. 137.
4. One complication, which I will not dwell on in what follows, is that for Løgstrup this care should in fact not be felt as demanded, as to feel it in this way is to have failed to care, so that ideally this relationship should not be expressed in deontological terms at all; but as Løgstrup himself continues to talk in terms of a demand, as he thinks this is often how we do experience this relationship, I will also use this terminology in the rest of the paper. For further discussion of this issue, see Stern (Citation2019, 105–8).
5. To some readers of Løgstrup, this may be surprising, as they precisely take Løgstrup’s ethics to be characterised by its ‘exorbitancy’ – cf. Critchley (Citation2007, 40). While such readings are right to stress that Løgstrup’s ethics is intentionally challenging in key respects, they tend to ignore the way this is balanced by more moderating claims, of the sort I will discuss, while in my view they also misinterpret what Løgstrup means by key terms such as ‘unfulfillability’.
6. It was not until the work of Annette Baier and Lars Hertzberg in the 1980s that trust became acknowledged as an issue in the literature of Anglo-American philosophy, and then started to be widely discussed. See Baier (Citation1986) and Hertzberg (Citation1988).
7. Løgstrup makes implicit reference to those circumstances earlier in the same paragraph.
8. I am here following Paul Faulkner’s terminology, which is itself partly drawing on Martin Hollis. See e.g. Faulkner (Citation2014), 1977–8, where he makes the distinction as follows: ‘To say that A trusts S to ϕ on this [predictive] understanding is just to say that A depends on S ϕ-ing and expects S to ϕ … [But on the affective] understanding to say that A trusts S to ϕ is to say that A depends on S ϕ-ing and expects this to motivate S to ϕ’. Cf. also Hollis (Citation1998).
9. As Løgstrup goes on to note, it may be the case that the best thing the trusted person can do is not what the trusting person is expecting and hoping for, as this might not be in their interests in some circumstances – for example, if you are trusting me to give you the drugs that I know will kill you. This is an aspect of what Løgstrup calls the ‘silence’ of the demand, which is not given content simply from what the person says they want. See Løgstrup (Citation2020b, 20–22).
10. See e.g. Løgstrup (Citation2020b, 16).
11. Though in certain ways distinctive, aspects of Løgstrup’s position can be compared to other writers who have raised worries about the tendency of some accounts of morality to become overdemanding – for example, to Susan Wolf’s objections to the over-zealous self-righteousness of ‘moral saints’, and to Bernard Williams’s warnings about the impact on the lives of individuals, though while Williams is thinking of utilitarianism, Løgstrup is thinking of Kierkegaard. See Wolf (Citation1982) and Williams (Citation1973).
12. See for example Løgstrup (Citation2020b) Chapters 8 and 9, where Løgstrup’s criticises various ways in which we attempt to wriggle out of our responsibilities, while seeking to ‘camouflage’ this from ourselves.
13. Cf. also Løgstrup (Citation2020b, 48): ‘That our lives with and against one another consist in the fact that one person is delivered up to the other, means that our mutual relationships are always relationships of power: one individual has more or less of the other individual’s life in their power’; and p. 49: ‘Because there is power in every human relationship, we are always constrained in advance – in the decision whether we will use our power over the other person for their good or our own … [W]hatever the situation, in deciding to act, the demand asserts itself, namely the demand to use our power over the other person in such a way as to serve them … [I]nsofar as the demand is disregarded, the other person’s life is not delivered up into care, but into exploitation’. Cf. also Løgstrup (Citation2020a, 11): ‘The love commandment arises from the interdependence and the power, that due to this interdependence, we cannot avoid having over each other. Therefore, we could also formulate the commandment as follows: the power that the interdependence gives you over another human being, you must use in their best interests.’ And Løgstrup (Citation2020a, 50): ‘[The relation of responsibility] involves the responsible person having power over the person for whom they are responsible. It is then just the case that responsibility relations consist in the fact that with this power the responsible person shall serve the person for whom they are responsible’. And Løgstrup (Citation2020a, 105): ‘Power is not only a public phenomenon. One person’s life is so entangled with the life of another that, in an immediate way, all relationships between human beings are relations of power. For this reason, there are many areas in our lives together where law and order do not reach and should not reach, but which, nevertheless, are relations of power.’
14. The idea that all cases of trust involve willed vulnerability might be challenged in two ways, either by pointing to cases where we have no choice but to trust, or to cases where trust is just presumed rather than willed. The former will be close to cases of needs discussed below, as our lack of choice will be based on the underlying need, because trusting you is my only way to get that need fulfilled; and the latter cases where trust is presumed are unlikely to raise issues of overdemandingness, as the fact we can presume such trust implies the trusted person is being expected to act within normal and implicitly mutually agreed parameters – as in Løgstrup’s own case, of where you trust someone who talks to you in conversation on a train (see Løgstrup Citation2020b, 9).
15. Cf. Løgstrup (Citation2020a, 43): ‘A duty can only be what we are capable of doing’.
16. While Løgstrup does not discuss this case explicitly in Løgstrup (Citation2020b), it of course lies in the background of his discussion of Jesus’s account of the love commandment, while it is discussed explicitly elsewhere: see e.g. Løgstrup (Citation2007, 76).
17. As noted above, Løgstrup would add that insofar as the Good Samaritan loves his neighbour, he would not see these as requirements or demands on him, as he acts out of love not duty or obligation: see Løgstrup (Citation2007, 76). And in treating them as obligations, I am assuming assistance here is not supererogatory: if such cases were, then the issue of overdemandingness would not even arise.
18. Recall note 13 above.
19. Cf. Løgstrup (Citation2020b, 6): ‘If one’s relationship to the other human being is the place where one’s relationship to God is decided, it must at the same time be the place where the existence of the other person is so totally at stake, that one’s failure is irreparable. So, it cannot be the case that what I withhold from the other person in one situation, they would be able to recoup either from me or from a third, fourth, or fifth person’; and cf. also Løgstrup (Citation2020b, 25): ‘Whatever happens, the whole weight of the situation is focused on the individual. It is up to them which way the situation goes and is determined in the end. Whatever transpires, what happens or does not happen, will come back to them as a consequence of what they do or fail to do’.
20. A more complicated situation is where others can help, but I know they will not, perhaps for what seem like bad reasons. Considerations of fairness might lead me to think the duty to help here is imperfect, as I now face a burden through the fault of others; but on Løgstrup’s conception of the ethical situation involving power, the fact that I am the only one with this power would I think suggest that the duty remains perfect, even if the reason I have that power reflects badly on the others who are available.
21. Cf. Greenspan (Citation2010, 196–7): ‘Now note that, in cases involving nearby emergencies, we seem to have a perfect duty of mutual aid, or what might be distinguished as a duty of rescue. I do not have moral leeway, say, to pass by an accident victim whom no one else is available to help, on the ground that I have given or plan to give enough aid elsewhere’, where Greenspan draws a contrast with Singer in an accompanying note (p. 197 note 22).
22. Of course, I do not deny that examples could be cooked up in which it did make you vulnerable – but I am not interested in those examples here, as the contrast is with moral theories that would seem to imply there is a requirement on me to give you this car even if there is no such vulnerability. By easily being able to escape those implications, I am suggesting, Løgstrup’s position is to be preferred to those that would find it harder to do so.
23. While I think Løgstrup’s position could be developed in these ways, it is more complicated to say that this would be the approach Løgstrup himself would take, as aspects of his view arguably suggest he would be unwilling to press too hard on the idea of ‘fault’ involved, given his own Lutheran sense that in one way or another, we are all ‘at fault’.
24. I am very grateful to the following for helpful comments on previous drafts: Tom Angier, Chris Bennett, Kayleigh Doherty, Paul Faulkner, Max Hayward, Jimmy Lenman, Yonatan Shemmer, and an anonymous referee for this journal.