Windelband on Causality

Students of philosophy are familiar with Aristotle's four types of causation; students of the history of philosophy know that the topic of causation is early, ubiquitous, and enduring. Aristotle was the first, but not the only, philosopher to develop a fourfold explanation of causality. Wilhelm Windelband, born in 1848 in Germany, also saw a quadruple structure. Windelband's four causes are not the same as Aristotle's. Windelband saw causation as a relation between things, states, and activities. He describes the first type of causation as being a situation in which

one thing is the cause, and another thing is the effect. That is the original form of the use of the causal relation, and it is chiefly found in organic life. The flower comes from the plant, the fruit from the tree, the ovum or the young from the mother. In such expressions as springing from, growing from, coming from, etc., in using the preposition "from" for the causal relation, language bears witness to the impression which contained this first form of causality. But if we interrogate science it assures us that this relation holds only for phenomenal things, for the momentary inherence-complexes of perception. The true things, the substances, neither come into existence nor pass out of it.

Windelband's first type of causation, then, may be called a "thing to thing" cause, or a "thing from thing" cause. By contrast, his second type of causality may be labeled a "thing to state" or "thing to activity" cause:

The thing is regarded as the cause of its states and its activities. We thus speak to some extent of man as the cause of his actions, of the soul as the common cause of its various functions, of the body - especially the organic body - as the cause of its movements. In developing those ideas we interpose, between the one thing and the multiplicity of its effects, the forces by means of which the substance exercises its causality. By this we understand certain general properties, capacities, or powers; and in this sense the attributes are at times called the cause of the modi. In the inner world the will is supposed to be the cause of volitions, the intelligence the cause of opinions, and so on. In the external world we find gravity, inertia, and vital forces filling the gap. Force is expressly defined as the cause of movement, and is thus regarded as a property of thing, the substratum, the matter, the substance. From the logical point of view all these forces are general concepts, assumed as the causes of the various functions. We easily see that the general thing, the force, is never the exclusive cause of the activity in question. In order to pass into such a special function, it always needs some occasion of action.

Windelband is aware here that this quarter of his causal analysis closely mirrors a quarter of Aristotle's:

We therefore distinguish between efficient and occasional causes: causa efficiens and causa occasionalis. It is clear that the two together make up the entire "cause"; just as in the analogous case of a syllogism the full ground for the conclusion is in the combination of the two premises, the "major" and the "minor." This is also a very familiar way of looking at things, and there are many variations of it; but it shows us from the start how uncertain it is which is the real cause, the efficient or the occasional or both together.

In addition to acknowledging his debt to Aristotle - by borrowing from Scholastic vocabulary - Windelband is also defying Hume: Windelband's analysis of causation is precisely the target for Hume's critiques. Moving on to the third of his four causes, Windelband describes it in contrast to the second type: it is

the converse of the preceding: states and activities are the causes of things. It is often said, for instance that the wind (which is a state or mode of motion) causes clouds. Many people say that insects are produced by the rain, which we regard as essentially a process, without inquiring into the thing that is moved. A house is put together by a number of activities; who exercises them is immaterial, as the functions are the immediate causes of the house. If in this way we come to treat the functions, detached from the things which discharge them, as independent causes of other things, we come in the end to the theory of the complete detachment of forces and functions. The dynamic view of nature, which Kant and Schelling held, falls into this class. Attraction and repulsion are forces of the primary reality, and matter is merely produced by them. The system is developed in a much more complicated form in Schelling's philosophy of nature.

In Windelband's explanation of his third cause, we see how he is historically located between Aristotelian physics in the past, and modern views of space-time in the future, with the German idealists as some type of midpoint. Neither a quasi-Aristotelian view of causation, nor a consideration of matter as merely a shorthand for the intersection of various forces without its own independent existence, are unique. The combination of the two, however, make Windelband potentially more philosophically interesting. Somewhat predictably, his fourth type of cause is

the causal relation between states: one is the cause and the other the effect. This situation holds for the immanent as well as the transgredient event. In the first case it is psychic, as when we say that perception causes memory (by association), or the willing of the end is the cause of the willing of the means (resolution), or the knowledge of the reason is the psychic cause of the knowledge of the conclusion (deduction). But even in the case of the physical immanent event we have this form of causality, especially in such complex structures as organisms. The digestion, for instance, is understood to be the cause of the formation of blood, of the peripheral stimulation of the nerves the cause of the central process in the brain. From the purely physical points of view, it is true, processes of this kind are resolved into transgredient events from member to member, and ultimately atom to atmo. It is in these mechanical transgredient events that we find this fourth form of causality in its simplest shape: the movement of the impelling body is the cause and the movement of the impelled body is the effect.

In using the word 'transgredient' Windelband introduces a bit of jargon. He explains the use of this word by contrasting 'transgredient event' with 'immanent event':

One case is where the event occurs in one thing. In one and the same thing A appear the states a₁ and a₂ in a definite succession. The thing, in other words, passes from one of its states to another. We will call this variety the immanent event. In our experience it is found chiefly in the psychic life, in which one presentation or emotion follows another in definite succession in one and the same subject of consciousness. This immanent change of state may, however, occur in a body: in one, for instance, which continues to move in a given direction at a certain speed in virtue of inertia. As a rule the material event is of the other type: it occurs between several different things. With state a of the thing A state b of the thing B is connected in a clear and invariable sequence. If we call this the transgredient event, because it passes from one thing to another, we must admit that we have no experience of such direct happening between different souls. If an event is to pass from one soul to another, it must be done by the mediation of bodies; and we thus get two sorts of transgredient events - the physical, between two bodies, and the psychological between sould and body or body and soul. In such cases, where is the unity of the event, which in the immanent event is based upon the identity of the thing? What in the case of transgredient events holds together the different states of different things in unity? We conceive this unity in the sense that the sequence is not merely a fact (like the world and the whistle in our preceding example), but that the states, which together make up the event, are necessarily connected in this sequence. The event therefore implies the necessity of a clear and invariable succession of states.

Earlier in the text, Windelband had given the example:

A word spoken in the house, followed by the whistle of a passing locomotive, does not make an "event," no matter how objectively the succession is determined. They lack any real connection.

Hayden White (born 1928 in Tennessee) explains that Windelband's interest in causation is central to his larger philosophical system. Windelband distinguishes between natural "nomothetic" sciences and historical "idiographic" sciences; the two are different not because of their objects, but rather because of their methods. Windelband, according to Hayden White, posits that any object can be studied by both types of science. One distinguishing feature of nomothetic sciences is causation. Therefore, White writes,

any given object could be studied by both kinds of science. A mental event, if viewed under the aspect of physical causality - as an instance of the working of some general law - was a natural event. That same mental event, described in its individuality and valued for its deviation from the class to which it belonged, because an object of the idiographic sciences.

Thus it is important for Windelband's project that causality be so analyzed that it can apply to everything, making any object a potential object for nomothetic sciences, while also leaving other aspect of any object as the object for idiographic sciences.

Taking Confucius Seriously

Although well-intended, damage has been done to serious academic thought, and its enterprise of close textual reading, by calls, motivated by a desire for multiculturalism, for the increased use of non-Western thinkers and belief systems in humanities courses and philosophy classes.

Wouldn't it be grand, it is thought, if we had courses which included classical Chinese and Indian philosophers? Surely, that would not only lead to more fertile philosophizing by students, given the intellectual cross-pollination, but it would also encourage more students of Asian heritage to enroll in such classes.

Noble imaginations like these result, however, in disappointing results. The expected outcomes fail to materialize because the multiculturalists who call for such academic programming do not know, understand, or realize what such study, if done properly, would entail. To engage in such study is to encounter sophisticated and complex texts which require analytical parsing by the student.

Perhaps motivated by pithy quotes from Confucius, and short aphoristic excerpts from koans, the multiculturalists envision a lively classroom engagement, in which students delve into riddles and - in the case of Asian and Indian students - find connections with their heritage.

In reality, students will encounter brilliant thought, but it will be encountered only after rigorous compilation of definitions of technical terms, and lots of close reading. Intellectually challenging and philosophically fruitful, yes, it certainly will be, but not an Oprah-like exploration of life's meaning and getting to one's genealogical roots.

Justin Smith, professor of philosophy, expresses it this way:

There is much talk in academic philosophy about the need to open up the discipline to so-called non-Western traditions and perspectives, both through changes to the curriculum and also within the demographics of philosophy departments themselves. These two aspects are seen as connected: it is thought that greater representation of non-Western philosophy will help to bring about greater diversity among the women and men who make up the philosophical community.

Smith identifies two typical mistakes of multiculturalism. One mistake is the notion that first-person involvement with subject matter must be maximized; a student will, so it is thought, work better and have a better experience, if he identifies with the content being studied; the multiculturalist doesn't believe that a student might be interested in, and motivated to study, that which is culturally other. If you want more Chinese students to enroll, include an overview of Chinese philosophy in one of your classes; if you want more Indian students to enroll, include a survey of Upanishads and Vedas. The multiculturalist is thus actually a chauvinist: he assumes that students of non-Western heritage are xenophobes and nativists, and won't take a class unless you've stocked it with Indian and Chinese philosophers.

The second mistake, also typical of multiculturalism, is the sacrifice of rigor. It is assumed that one can simply "add in" a few token non-Western thoughts into humanities syllabus or a philosophy course. This ignores the meticulous research which creates a respectable academic discipline. It would be a parallel if one said, "science fiction is really popular; throw some quantum mechanics into your Euclidian Geometry course." As Justin Smith puts it:

When I teach classical Indian philosophy, or advocate teaching it, for example, I often hear in response that doing so provides a service to the university community, and to the student body, insofar as it enhances the diversity of the philosophy curriculum, and makes the curriculum representative of a wider portion of the student body. But what I'm teaching are topics such as 5th-century Indian theories of logical inference, or the concept of qualitative atomism in classical Buddhism: material that is sufficiently obscure that no student, of any background, should be expected at the outset to recognize him or herself in it.

What is true of non-Western thought is equally true of Western thought: one would not expect a student, merely because his last name is Schmidt, to form an emotional connection with the writings of Gottlob Frege; one would not expect a student, simply because his last name is MacGregor, to have an immediate affection for the texts of Thomas Reid.

The goal of reflecting the diversity of our own society by expanding the curriculum to include non-European traditions has so far been a tremendous failure. And it has failed for at least two reasons. One is that non-Western philosophy is typically represented in philosophy curricula in a merely token way. Western philosophy is always the unmarked category, the standard in relation to which non-Western philosophy provides a useful contrast. Non-Western philosophy is not approached on its own terms, and thus philosophy remains, implicitly and by default, Western. Second, non-Western philosophy, when it does appear in curricula, is treated in a methodologically and philosophically unsound way: it is crudely supposed to be wholly indigenous to the cultures that produce it and to be fundamentally different than Western philosophy in areas like its valuation of reason or its dependence on myth and religion. In this way, non-Western philosophy remains fundamentally “other.”

Professor Smith is pointing out that it is absurd to assume that a student whose grandparents came from China will have some innate connection with Confucius, and naturally embrace Confucian views as some explicit expression of what the student already believes by virtue of his heritage. This fallacy is so crude that it constitutes an insult, and this fallacy is delivered by the multiculturalists who wear the badge of sensitivity as their highest honor. In any society, the link between philosophy and culture is often distant and tenuous, if it exists at all. Do we take Kierkegaard as an expression of Danish culture? Is Spinoza an organic outgrowth of Dutch culture?

In philosophy, more than in any other discipline, one encounters nuanced distinctions maintained with precision. Yet the multiculturalist barges in, assuming that all Chinamen give a priori assent to Confucianism, that all Indians are in intellectual harmony with the Upanishads, and that these questions can be treated with broad generalizations about culture, rather than with close textual study earned by carefully crafted documents arising from honed philosophical traditions.

In fact, scholars who have little to do with multicultural trendiness are those most likely to give non-Western philosophers their due. A philosopher whose specialty is Aristotle finds his skills put to good use in studying the Analects. A specialist in Schopenhauer and Hegel finds excellent engagement in Sanskrit texts. It is telling that thorough studies of such philosophies are found outside of, and temporally prior to, the multiculturalist takeover.

Outside of philosophy, an example comes from the related discipline of philology: the study of Ge'ez, an ancient form of Ethiopian Amharic, and the study of Nubian dialects, were more wide-spread among American and European universities a century ago than they are today, despite - or perhaps because of - the rise of multiculturalism. Why? Such academic work requires rigor and analysis: real intellectual work. That's not what the multiculturalists are seeking.

Explanations

One way to understand philosophy is to see philosophy as an enterprise which offers explanations. Philosophers explain things - things like time, space, causation, etc. If that's what philosophy is, then we need to understand the mechanics of explanations - how does one construct an explanation? What makes one explanation better than another?

(To be sure, this is simply one way to characterize philosophy; there are many others.)

If we think about the very first philosopher, we can understand his novel and bold statements as offering an explanation. We are confronted with the world - the phenomena of the five senses, of daily experience. What causes them? From what did they arise? Historian Anthony Esolen writes:

The first Greeks to call themselves philosophers strove to understand the physical world, to see what prime element underlay clouds and lions and marble and blood. We should not take for granted their bold assumption that such an element could be found, and that the world was intelligible! Thales of Miletus reasoned that such an element must be capable of assuming the three phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Hence he posited that water was somehow the arche or foundation or origin of all things, though he knew well that you couldn't squeeze water to make iron or clay. His successor Anaximenes voted for air. Others named earth or fire or some combination of the four so-called elements.

Thales was exploring the discipline we now call cosmology. What is the systematic structure of the universe? Although we may laugh at his notion that water is the foundational element of the universe, he had rational, if not correct, evidence: it covers 75% of the earth's surface, humans are approximately 75% water, it's necessary for all known forms of life; it's found everywhere on planet earth; etc. Not a bad hypothesis. But another Greek philosopher soon found the problem with the explanation offered by Thales, and the with the explanations offered by many of the other pre-Socratic philosophers:

But there's a logical problem with all explanations of the world that resolve it into such stuff as water or air. To say that the arche of the world is water doesn't explain anything, since water itself is one of the things that requires explaining. It is circular reasoning. Nor does it help to stretch the circle as wide as the cosmos. The philosopher Anaximander, therefore, reason that whatever the arche is, it cannot be like the things it explains. It must be beyond predication. So he called it apeiron or the boundless.

The explanation for the physical world cannot be, according to Anaximander's reasoning, simply one of the ingredients of that world. Later philosophers would use words like 'essence' and 'substance' to try to capture similar ideas. That thing, upon which the physical universe is contingent, cannot be merely one part of the physical universe. It must be something other. Anaximander may get credit for invented that branch of philosophy we now call metaphysics.

Different Paths to Philosophy

Not every philosopher has decided, at some young age, to be a philosopher, and followed this decision by studying philosophy at a university. To the contrary, many philosophers have started their careers in some other field, and shifted to philosophy after making a start in those other disciplines. Examples abound: Hegel and Schelling began as theology students; Tad Schmaltz intended to become a lawyer; Nietzsche was a professor of Greek and Latin classical literature.

In this pattern we find also Karl Jaspers. As a young man beginning his university studies, philosophy from far from his mind. Hans Saner, who worked with Jaspers, writes:

Shortly before the end of his high school years, the father one day summoned his son. He showed him his books, oriented him about income and property, and said to him, " ... I think that you can assume that you have ten years to study independently and work, before you will need to earn your own living." The high school graduate decided to study law, and then as a lawyer or a businessman to enter "practical life."

In fact, however, Jaspers abandoned the study of law, not for philosophy, but for medicine. His interest in medicine was more than casual: he suffered from diseases which threaten to kill him. He did well, passed his examinations, and began a successful career as a physician. A fellow who studied first law, and then medicine, would hardly seem to be a likely candidate for a philosopher:

Jaspers had never begun the academic study of philosophy under the direction of a teacher. He did indeed occasionally detect the inclination toward it; but he considered himself in his youth to be insufficiently gifted for this. Even choosing philosophy as a profession in a planned way would have seemed to him like a presumption. Philosophy was for him not a subject among subjects, which one could learn; whoever approached it this way continually ran the danger of end up in mere babble. "The path to philosophy does not go via abstract thought," but rather via the recognition of reality: of nature and of humanity. For this reason, Jaspers, even in regard to philosophy, had studied natural sciences and medicine. "It was the path to philosophy which had determined my choice of studies."

It is, then, love of truth which drives the philosopher. Whichever subjects he may study, the underlying urge is the same.

This gaze toward philosophy had emerged during the loneliness of the high school and university years and in face of the awareness of being constantly threatened by illness. What meaning could lie in an existence which was necessarily separated from that of other humans? What meaning did the exertion toward activity have, if no objective result was to be expected because of the probability of an early death? No science answered these questions. "There remained only one path: philosophy must show the truth, the meaning, and the goal of our lives."

His questions about truth and about the meaning of life were motivated by a very personal sense that he was on the verge of meaninglessness.

For this reason, Jaspers began early to read the philosophers: Spinoza, Lucretius, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche; Plotinus, Schelling, Kant, only later (after around 1913) Kierkegaard and Hegel. Above all, the reading of Spinoza brought him into a state in which he could bear, and even often affirm, sickness. "Philosophy is of amazing value. If it did not exist, life would be terrible." This was true not only for reading, but rather above all for thoughts, which arose at that time in his own philosophizing: "I suddenly marvel, that I exist at all. Out of an unknown darkness, the individual human climbs step by step to the consciousness of his existence ... he feels, that in an isolated existence, he has no significance." His existence must, without surrendering his solitude, be open to other people and to God. One "must have the strength to retain these categories, despite the way the pastors have botched them up." But the biggest problems "on which everything seems to depend" are the questions "what death, and what an individuality, mean." The consciousness of the inevitability of death distinguishes humans, and bestows uniqueness upon their actions. One should therefore continually listen to the memento mori. Only in the presence of death does one learn to understand: "we are always on the border ...", and only in understanding finality do we become aware: "we must struggle."

The questions which drive Jaspers, then, are about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and about discovering the truth. Living with an awareness of death brings us closer to discovering the meaning of life, and to discovering truth. Openness brings us closer to these discoveries: relationships to our fellow human being, and our relationship to God will help us to learn the truth. Jaspers is clear: despite the fact that some people who call themselves religious have "botched up" concepts of life, death, and God, we must continue to pursue the study of these things. Merely because other people have made a mess of spiritual thought is no reason for us to abandon it - we must rather fix it. Jaspers is encouraging philosophers to engage in thought which will clarify our understanding of God, thought which will correct the errors of sloppy thinking by other people in the past.

Society’s Right to Exact Your Compliance

Does society have a moral right to make you do something? This is different from the negative case, i.e., society’s right to prohibit you from doing something. William F. Buckley explains:

A society has the right to impose negative restraints; but positive acts of compliance it may exact only in extraordinary situations.

A century earlier, John Stuart Mill wrote something similar:

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

These two ethical formulations pose a number of questions. What are the consequences for society if we accept these formulations? Why do those who allegedly accept them disagree among themselves about the practical application?

Plato and Science

One of the more quotable lines from Plato's Meno is about the limits of human knowledge. The general topic of the conversation is about virtue. After ruminating about possible definitions of 'virtue', Socrates says that he doesn't know what it is, but that he's going to "examine and seek ... what it may be" or "carry out ... a[n] investigation and inquiry into what it is." The interlocutor challenges him on the possibility of such an investigation:

How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?

One source of the ambiguity which leads to this paradox is the definition of 'know' as a verb. If there is more than one definition, i.e., if 'know' refers to more than one epistemological action, then one could be said to 'know virtue' and to 'not know virtue' simultaneously. Such homonymic cases are often the foundations for jokes and riddles, such as "what do you call a winter athlete from Warsaw? a ski Pole."

If Socrates claims that he does not understand what constitutes virtue, he says that he does not know virtue. But if he simultaneously can identify an instance of virtue, he can claim to know virtue. Perhaps I do not know what constitutes my favorite soup at a restaurant - I do not know its ingredients - but I certainly know this soup when I taste it - I can identify it: a possible solution to Meno's paradox.

In a reverse situation, I might not be able to identify a thing, but I might understand its constituents. Imagine that I've never tasted borscht, but I've learned that it's a soup made with beets and sour cream and often served at room temperature. If I were blindfolded and offered a spoonful of it, I would not be able to identify it - I would not "know" it - although I understand its composition - I "know" it.

To place the paradox in a different context, imagine that you are looking for something which does not exist. Serious scientists spent years looking for a sample of Phlogiston. They "knew" what they were looking for, and yet how can one "know" what does not exist? Likewise, I can "know" what a four-headed swan is, inasmuch as I can conceptualize and make to myself a representation of such a creature; but I cannot "know" a four-headed swan in the sense of being able to recognize or identify it, because it doesn't exist.

The same would be true of aether, more properly called 'Luminiferous aether', which occupied earnest physicists as late as the early 1900's, when Einstein wrestled with the concept; he eventually rejected it, along with almost all other physicists, although he sometimes confusingly used the word 'aether' to speak of a space-time matrix.

Additionally, we can note a connection to Ockham: if I can't "know" something, being able to neither identify it or understand its composition, then I cannot fit it into a chain of causes and effects. Being unable to locate it in a causal sequence, I cannot call it necessary, and therefore am not justified in positing its existence.

Although philosophy is not philology, we nonetheless should take care to recall that Plato's Meno has been translated for those of us who cannot read Greek. To that end, to be thorough, we include an alternate rendering of the passage:

But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?

Meno's paradox presents us with richer food for thought than the perhaps more popular but silly aphorisms about "knowing nothing" which Plato sometimes places into the mouth of Socrates.

Ethics in Context

The study of ethics is perhaps unlike other branches of philosophy, inasmuch as it requires some consideration of context. A philosopher who asserts an ethical proposition does so in a social, historical, and cultural context; a reader considers that proposition in a context; an ethical situation occurs in a context.

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.