By highlighting this notion of context, we do not automatically place ourselves among those who denial universal moral principles. Even if one acknowledges such eternal ethical truths, it is undeniable that they find applications in concrete situations, and that those situations vary.
In contrast, a timeless metaphysical truth, e.g., an assertion about the relationship between the physical brain and the metaphysical mind, will also find itself applied in various situations, but the contexts of those situations will not factor significantly into the applications of any universal metaphysical propositions. The mind-body problem is the same for the Frenchman as it is for the Chinaman; the same in 2000 B.C. as it is in 2000 A.D.
Ethical propositions are more affected by context because, although ethics is not psychology, ethics is nonetheless more closely related to psychology than, e.g., metaphysics or symbolic logic. On a meta-level, philosophical considerations, not about ethics, but rather about the way in which ethics is done, are also necessarily contextualized. Perhaps this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer meant when he wrote:
Rarely perhaps has any generation shown so little interest as ours does in any kind of theoretical or systematic ethics. The academic question of a system of ethics seems to be of all questions the most superfluous. The reason for this is not to be sought in any supposed ethical indifference on the part of our period. On the contrary it arises from the fact that our period, more than any earlier period in the history of the west, is oppressed by a superabounding reality of concrete ethical problems. It was otherwise when the established orders of life were still so stable as to leave room for no more than minor sins of human weakness, sins which generally remained hidden, and when the criminal was removed as abnormal from the horrified or pitying gaze of society. In those conditions ethics could be an interesting theoretical problem.
Lurking behind Bonhoeffer's prose is a meta-level question: why engage in ethical philosophy? The impetus to ethical philosophy, in contrast to merely concrete moral thought, arises when there are not enough concrete instances of ethical situations to keep the mind occupied. Just as a pilot flying his spacecraft through an asteroid field has little inclination for theoretical physics - being quite occupied with actual mechanics - so the individual fully occupied with actual ethical situations may not be inclined to the analysis of systematic ethics.
Today there are once more villains and saints, and they are not hidden from the public view. Instead of the uniform greyness of the rainy day we now have the black storm-cloud and the brilliant lightning-flash. The outlines stand out with exaggerated sharpness. Reality lays itself bare. Shakespeare's characters walk in our midst. But the villain and the saint have little or nothing to do with systematic ethical studies. They emerge from primeval depths and by their appearance they tear open the infernal or the divine abyss from which they come and enable us to see for a moment into mysteries of which we had never dreamed. What is worse than doing evil is being evil. It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than of a lover of truth to lie. It is worse when a misanthropist practises brotherly love than when a philanthropist gives way to hatred. Better than truth in the mouth of the liar is the lie. Better than the act of brotherly love on the part of the misanthrope is hatred. One sin, then, is not like another. They do not all have the same weight. There are heavier sins and lighter sins. A falling away is of infinitely greater weight than a falling down. The most shining virtues of him who has fallen away are as black as night in comparison with the darkest lapses of the steadfast.
Just as theoretical conversations about the shape of the earth ended when it was successfully circumnavigated, discussions about good and evil end when both are concretely present. Bonhoeffer's distinction between "doing evil" and "being evil" bears closer examination. Perhaps it can be explained by analogy to the distinction between accident and essence. Yet to mark a human as essentially evil, or essentially good, seems to violate the laws of human nature, inasmuch as we are enjoined to "call no man good" and yet required to acknowledge the imagio dei in each human. Comparing occasional sins to accidental properties seems plausible, for even the most saintly commit sins, and even the most demonic might act corresponding to virtue. But if good and evil are to be essential in a man, then it would seem only in this way, that it would be a changeable essence - an odd turn of phrase, to be sure, because essence is often defined as that which does not change.
Perhaps a better understanding of Bonhoeffer's distinction would be the difference between occasional evil act and being in a mode of evil. As in music, there are accidental notes - a sharp or flat which takes the melody momentarily out of key - and there are modes in which an entire melody may be composed: an occasional transgression contrasted with a systematic pattern of transgression.
A third way to see this distinction between "being good" and "doing good" would be teleological: the isolated transgression may be the result of succumbing temporarily to temptation and to desire; the systematic and overarching pursuit of evil, of bringing harm to others, might correspond to Bonhoeffer's phrase ' being evil.'
In any case, Bonhoeffer, who is not strictly speaking a philosopher at all, yields perhaps a stimulus for comparing various meta-ethical perspectives.
