Asceticism as an eclectic ethics

Abstract

The methodological divisions in ethics result in fundamental consequences both on the conceptual level and in the practical applicability of such ethics. These divisions arise from broader theoretical positions, however they are also the work of individual moral sensibilities or 'moral instincts', as they are called at least in the Hegelian tradition. The deontological, consequentialist, vrtue-, developmental and other methodological models of ethics have facilitated a miltiplication of standards of ethical argument. This process has been intellectually productive, however at the same time it has created significant problems for practical philosophy, especially for applied philosophical areas which require a clearly defined and specific referential relationship between the key values formative of the respective ethical models on the one hand, and the concrete moral challenges encountered by the proponents of such ethics, on the other. The contemporary, value- and methodologically transformative age, requires ethics to go beyond the methodological and conceptual reductionism and adopt a synthetic and eclectic approach to moral argument. The first question to be asked in this context is what types of already available normative ethical models might be reinterpreted and further developed into synthetic ethics. This paper discusses the ethics of asceticism, primarily in the form of Christian ethics, as a good candidate for a comprehensive and synthetic ethics. The paper purports to elucidate, on various levels, the potential of ascetic ethics to integrate elements of eudaimonistic ethics, duty ethics, virtue-ethics, consequentialist and deontological ethical methodologies. To do so the paper focuses two key and, at least by my lights, provocative questions: (1) To what extent the ethics of asceticism is 'negative' and based solely on the principles of self-denial, and to what extent is it able to incorporate a positive dynamic content? In other words, can the ascetic Christian ethics be interpreted so that it is able to integrate the concept of pleasure in the meaning of 'eudaimonia'? (2) Is an ascetic ethics able to generate specific moral questions instrumental to a moral justification of asctions, which would meaningfully integrate the various methods of ethical argument (minimally the deontological, consequentialist and virtue-ethics)? If this consideration is able to show that ascetic ethics can achieve both goals, one could reasonably conclude that it is a good candidate for a general eclectic ethics. Of course, this would not automatically mean that the asectic ethics is the only potentially synthetic ethics, however it would facilitate a broader conceptualisation of asceticism as a practical way of moral thinking geared towards achieving a 'good life'. At the same time, such a consideration might open an additional inroad into the formulation of general criteria which practical philosophy, and especially ethics, would need to fulfil in order to address the composite and synthetic issues that life in a transformative age presents.