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A Transcendent Turn in Ethics

Throughout his work Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor (1989) makes the irenic suggestion that there is no good reason to exclude agape love of the Judeo-Christian heritage as a viable hypergood for the moral self. He sees it as the highest form of human relationship. Taylor (1989) writes, “Nothing prevents a priori our coming to see God or the Good as essential to our best account of the human world” (C. Taylor, 1989, 73). As a significant percentage of the world population holds to be true, “God is also one of those contemporary sources of the good in the West, the love of which has empowered people to do and be good” (C. Taylor, 1989, 34). Michael Morgan claims that Taylor’s account in Sources of the Self re-establishes the plausibility of the divine-human relationship for moral experience: “God is one of those entities that has figured in our moral ontology, has provided a standard or ground of value, and has given our beliefs and actions meaning and significance” (M. Morgan, 1994, 53). This relationship is generally occluded in contemporary Western culture and philosophical ethics, and so it remains significant that Taylor clarifies it through his language of articulation. He illuminates new possibilities for a robust ethical discourse. 

The potential impact of the hypergood of agape love and the constitutive good of a trinitarian God on moral discourse is worth discussing. I proceed with a view to both appreciation of, and a balance/corrective to, some of the exclusions and extremes in Foucault’s aesthetic self-construction. This opens up new possibilities for the moral self within a larger moral horizon, and it further wrestles with the concept of accountability to the other (extra-self), both natural and human, through the concept of goodness-freedom, a word which I have coined in contrast to Foucault’s aesthetic-freedom. There is a fresh hermeneutic at play in this thought experiment which will add insight to the critical analysis of Foucault’s ethics and the proper contextualization of freedom. I have discussed in this series freedom as depicted by Foucault and others as ontology (a Nietszchean stance, an ideology of the aesthetic), or freedom as the escape of obligations or restrictions. Here I want to talk about freedom within the context of divine goodness-freedom. The creative engagement/interface of freedom of the will and divine goodness is proposed as a creative way forward in Western late modern culture, a way out of despair, violence, and nihilism. 

I further explore the idea of a possible transcendent turn in ethics. I draw on some of the insights of philosophical theology to flesh out a plausibility structure for re-interpreting the moral self. There is an increasingly robust and fruitful scholarly dialogue between theology and ethics today. That is certainly true of theologians and post-structuralist philosophers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (G. Ward, 1997; J.K.A. Smith, 2004; J. Bernauer & J. Carrette (Eds.), 2004). And it should be stated for the record that trinitarian theology is a substantial, rich, and relevant academic discourse in its own right, especially in Britain and the United States. This particular discussion draws on one British (Alistair I. McFadyen), one American (D. Stephen Long), and one German (Christoph Schwöbel) trinitarian theologian for insights into a fresh understanding of trinitarian goodness and its implications for human goodness-freedom. I will not, however, offer an argument/apologetic for the existence of a good and trinitarian Christian God at this juncture, nor will I attempt to show why one should choose the hypergood of agape love over all other contenders. That is beyond my purview here. Other have entered this space with good results. It is curious that Foucault has shown a strong interest in Christian self-formation at this juncture of his research (born into a French Catholic family), and studied many documents in Christian monasteries. Both in the unpublished book Confessions of the Flesh and his later works and interviews, he shows an interest in Christian (especially Catholic monastic) technologies of the self, as he contrasts them with the pagan Greek and Roman technologies. For these reasons as well, it seems legitimate to proceed with this line of investigation. Spiritual formation has always been interested in the transformation of the person with ethical implications.

Taylor (1989, 71) provocatively notes that, “at least some of the hypergoods … must be illusory, the projection of less admirable interests or desires.” He questions ones that lead to reductionism, ones that abstract self from real life, ones that distort reality or exclude experience in some way. After all, ethics is about how we should live well together. We have shown in this series that one never starts from a position of ethical neutrality. All are embedded in a moral-spiritual world, even those who deny it. Taylor argues that our moral ontology springs from the best account of the human domain we can arrive at, and this account must be anthropologically relevant and liveable, relating to the meanings things have for us. In this light, he writes, 

The belief in God … offers a reason … as an articulation of what is crucial to the shape of the moral world in one’s best account. It offers a reason rather as I do when I lay out the most basic concerns in order to make sense of my life to you. (C. Taylor, 1989, 76) 

Indeed, it offers a plausibility structure, not an absolute argument or scientific proof. Taylor (1994, 228) reflects on this work: “My thesis claims to be about what actually makes one’s spiritual outlook plausible to them.” In this series, I have attempted to show a legitimate process of recovery of things lost—the language of the good and the context/situatedness/embodiement of freedom and the moral self. The recovery of the language of divine goodness for the discussion of moral self-constitution/self-discovery is not foreign to the trajectory of the argument, but aptly follows Taylor’s suggested transcendent turn. A contribution to moral thinking is offered, and a resistance to exclusion of the Christian religion in moral discourse is levelled. The argument begins with the concept of the epiphany of transcendence in the next post.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator with UBC Faculty & Postgraduate Students, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinar Producer.

See also https://ubcgfcf.com for our next lecture with Dr. Quentin Genuis Rethinking Medical Ethics in Light of the Good.

Gordon is offering a public workshop on his new book at the Apologetics Canada Annual Conference March 8, 2025 in Abbotsford, B.C. Identity Through the Lens of the Incarnation

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Bernauer, J. & Carrette, J. (Eds.) (2004). Michel Foucault and Theology: The politics of religious experience. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate. 

Long, D.S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

McFadyen, A.I. (1990). The Call to Personhood: A Christian theory of the individual in social relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

McFadyen, A.I. (1995). Sins of Praise: the Assault on God’s Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.). God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 36-56). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Morgan, M.L. (1994). Religion, History and Moral Discourse. In J. Tully, (Ed.), Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The philosophy of Charles Taylor in question. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Smith, J.K.A. (2004). Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a post-secular culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 

Ward, G. (Ed.) (1997) The Postmodern God: a theological reader. Oxford: Blackwell.