Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I. The Pharisee
Chapter II. Self-Righteousness
Chapter III. The Tragic Sinner
Chapter IV. Letter and Spirit
Chapter V. Freedom of Spirit
Chapter VI. "Felix Culpa"
Chapter VII. Person and Action
Chapter VIII. Sin Mysticism
Chapter IX. The Christian Attitude toward Sinners
Chapter X. Basic Errors of Circumstance Ethics
Chapter XI. Christian Morality
Epilogue. The Case Against Situation Ethics

The book of my esteemed friend Dietrich Von Hildebrand entitled "True Morality and its Counterfeits" was heralded when it first appeared as the most fully considered answer to a law-defying situation ethics as well as to an ossified legalistic ethics. The book is a positive and constructive answer. The reader can understand with little difficulty the basic principles in question.

Today the book takes on even more importance in the face of the emotional discussions about "contextual ethics" and above all in the light of the newly published book by Fletcher entitled "Situation Ethics."

Even though it is far from me to deny the genuine concern of the advocates of "contextual ethics," I nevertheless believe that to a great extent there is in their utterances not only a misconception concerning basic laws but—and this is more deeply fundamental—a misconstruing of the order of love. To many, love is something vague and indefinite.

God is love. God is also truth. A love that seeks to honor Him must seek the truth, the genuine form, the meaningful expression in moral living.

I believe that the discussion about all these questions can be made more fruitful if it is conducted on the level of value-ethics and by means of careful phenomenology instead of merely in the categories of law, norm and context. Dietrich Von Hildebrand does just that in a masterly way in this book.

Vatican II is calling to all to distinguish the unchangeable from the changeable forms. Only in this way can we make full use of the possibilities of salvation offered in the present hour. If beyond the changeable norms of the Church's directives, we see the values whose protection is the real issue at stake, then it will be easier for us to recognize the full continuity of life in the Church.

Bernard Haring

I wish to express my indebtedness to the Rockefeller Foundation for the generous help they have granted me toward the completion of this work.

I also wish to express my grateful appreciation for the cooperation given me by Fordham University, in particular for lightening the many burdens connected with the routine of classwork. This has enabled me to finish my work much sooner.

Again I have to acknowledge a great indebtedness to my beloved friend and colleague, Dr. Robert C. Pollock, Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, Graduate School, who has given so much care and time to revising my manuscript in a way in which only he is capable. The peerless help that he has given me presupposes many rare qualities: the capacity of attaining a most intimate understanding of the thought and intention of another philosopher; a great, loving respect for the ideas and style of another, and an understanding that they are basically inseparable; the humility to efface his own strong philosophical personality to such an extent that not the slightest note of his own style and way can be detected in the changes that he has suggested.

It is a great happiness to me to acknowledge publicly these hidden qualities in Dr. Pollock, which explain and account for what is by no means hidden: that he is both a great historian of philosophy and an eminent philosopher.

New YorkConversio Pauli, I[953]

Dietrich Von Hildebrand

Professor of Philosophy,

Graduate School,

Fordham University

"What I am going to say may startle you, but I think it's better to be a dirty beast than to have Brigitte Pian's brand of virtue."[1]A striking feature of many modern novels, in contrast to the literature of former times, to a work like Manzoni's, "The Betrothed," for instance, is the fact that roles seem in some way exchanged. Whereas in former times, the saint was opposed to the sinner, or at least the converted sinner to the mediocre man, now the sinner assumes the role of the hero, and the virtuous man is often presented as self-righteous, pharisaic, mediocre, or at least unamiable. In short. he is presented more or less as the negative counterpart.

This applies to several works of the great French writer, Mauriac, and to a certain extent also to Evelyn Waugh's novel, "Brideshead Revisited". Above all, this characteristic is to be found in Graham Greene's novels. The glorification of the sinner is to be found in a much more exaggerated way, and with a completely different accent, in novels such as those of Jean Genet.

This feature is more than a mere manifestation of a love for the complicated, the uncommon, the paradoxical. The motives for it are not of an artistic nature. It also goes definitely beyond the declaration of war on mediocrity that we find in Leon Bloy's powerful and volcanic novels. This trend is in reality a very significant symptom of a moral mentality widespread today, even among pious Catholics aiming at a deep religious life.

In an allocution to the Federation Mondiale des Jeunesses Feminines Catholiques, His Holiness Pope Pius XII condemned this new ethics whose main features are characterized in the following terms:

The distinctive mark of this morality is that it is in fact in no way based on universal moral laws, for instance, on the Ten Commandments, but on the real and concrete conditions or circumstances in which one must act, and according to which the individual conscience has to judge and choose. This state of things is unique and valid but once for each human action. This is why the supporters of this ethics affirm that the decision of one's conscience cannot be commanded by universal ideas, principles, and laws....

In the determination of conscience, the individual encounters God immediately and makes up his mind before Him, without the intervention in any way of any law, any authority, any community, any cult or confession.

Here there is only the "I" of man and the "I" of the personal God; not of the God of law, but of God our Father, with Whom man must unite himself in filial love.

Viewed in this way, the decision of conscience is a personal risk, according to one's own knowledge and evaluation, in all sincerity before God. These two things, conscientiousness and the sincere response, are what God considers; the action does not concern Him....

All this corresponds perfectly to the "majority" status to which man has attained, and, in the Christian order, to the filial relation which, according to the teaching of Christ, has us pray: "Our Father." This personal view spares man from having at every instant to consider whether the decision to take is in conformity with the paragraphs of the law, or with the canons of abstract norms and regulations; it protects him from the hypocrisy of a pharisaical faithfulness to the law; it protects him as much from pathological scrupulousness as from levity or the lack of conscience, because it makes the entire responsibility before God rest personally upon the individual Christian. So speak those who are preaching the "new morality."[2]

It is the merit of the great German theologian, Karl Rahner, S.J., to have been the first to lay his finger on this new ethics, which plays a great role in contemporary youth movements and literature.[3] He distinguished two different trends, "circumstance ethics" and "sin mysticism." He mentions no names and quotes no authors. He simply characterizes the two tendencies. They manifest themselves in various forms today, especially among Catholics. They are not philosophical theories, but rather lived, existential approaches to moral problems.

We might ask ourselves how, even among Catholics, a trend could arise that contains such obvious errors. Rahner himself tends to explain it exclusively in terms of the instability and insecurity of our present epoch. But it does not appear likely that this can be done successfully.

Granted that "circumstance ethics" contains grave and disastrous errors and that its most advanced champions fall into radical subjectivism (and, as Rahner rightly points out, into moral nominalism), nevertheless, in many novels somewhat influenced by this trend and plainly concerned with its problems, we also find good and praiseworthy elements.

Circumstance ethics is partially inspired by a reaction against a "heresy of ethos," which can be found in many mediocre, conventional Christians. It is the same heresy of ethos we have mentioned in several other books.[4] It is not a formal heresy. Those Christians infected by it do not depart from any dogma. But their entire approach to the supernatural sphere is conventional. Their obedience to Holy Church does not differ in quality from their loyalty to a profane authority. Their approach to the sacred commandments of God does not differ in practice from their approach to conventional rules of society concerning good manners, although they will theoretically admit a difference between them. They not only lack completely the "sensus supranaturalis," but they have no living relation either to the breath of the Holy Gospel or to the Liturgy or the Holy Church. Worldly standards have crept into the moral code by which they live. They bow before great efficiency. Success makes too great an impression on them. They differ in no way from non-believers in their attitudes unless a strict moral commandment intervenes. They have lost even a faint awareness of the words of Christ:

"If you were of the world, the world would love what is its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."[5]

Cardinal Newman says of these Catholics:

". . . the world then witnesses against you by being good friends with you; you could not have got on with the world so well, without surrendering something which was precious and sacred. The world likes you, all but your professed creed; distinguishes you from your creed in its judgment of you, and would fain separate you from it in fact...."[6]

". . . your sole idea of sin is, the sinning in act and in deed; sins of habit, which cling so close to you that they are difficult to detect, and manifest themselves in slight but continual influences on your thoughts, words, and works, do not engage your attention at all. You are selfish, and obstinate, and worldly, and self-indulgent; you neglect your children; you are fond of idle amusements; you scarcely ever think of God from day to day, for I cannot call your hurried prayers morning and night any thinking of Him at all. You are friends with the world, and live a good deal among those who have no sense of religion."[7]

The origin of circumstance ethics and of sin mysticism is certainly linked to a reaction against this bourgeois, conventional deformation of Christianity.

The "heresy of ethos" manifests itself also in a relative indulgence toward pharisaism and self-righteousness. It cannot be denied that in the conscience of the average Christian the danger of pharisaism plays less of a role than the danger of concupiscence. In many Christian societies, self-righteousness does not evoke scandal to the same degree as adultery or drunkenness do.

Circumstance ethics reacts further against the tendency to substitute legality for morality, to replace moral values by rights, to adapt morality to the juridical sphere, and to make of the juridical sphere the "causa exemplaris" of morality—a tendency that can be found among many Christians and sometimes even in Christian textbooks.

In some adherents of circumstance ethics, one also finds a protest against an overemphasis on actions seen in an abstract light, implying a disregard of the individual's entire personality, with its different strata and its mysterious complexity. It is a protest against oversimplifications that we often encounter in moral judgments of Christians concerning their neighbors.

Circumstance ethics fears a kind of depersonalization that easily goes hand in hand with the above-mentioned tendency of adapting morality to the juridical sphere. It is believed that in order to escape from this oversimplified and stereotyped approach, one must stress the uniqueness of every single case—a uniqueness arising not only from the circumstance but also from the uniqueness of every individual person. Existential or circumstance ethics thus claims that our moral decisions cannot be ruled by abstract, general principles and commandments, and at the same time accents the point that the complexity and uniqueness of every concrete situation require a personal decision of our conscience.

It is certainly true and in full conformity with the Christian tradition to say that knowing that somebody has never committed murder, theft, or adultery, we only know of the absence of grave moral sins, but still remain ignorant of what kind of man he is from the moral point of view. He may be a highly virtuous person or an uncharitable, proud, hard-hearted man. Even when we are aware that he gives a great deal of money for charitable purposes and that he attends mass every Sunday, we as yet do not have evidence of his moral character.

In order to learn something about a person's moral standard, we must first of all ascertain his motives for abstaining from evil actions, for almsgiving, or for going to church on Sunday. To use traditional terms, we have to examine the "inis operantis," and not only the "finis operis." To use our own terminology, we must recognize not only that he has abstained from evil actions, and that he has realized goods having a morally relevant value, or accomplished actions that, as such, are morally good; we must know also whether or not his will was motivated by the morally relevant value or by a moral commandment.[8]

This applies, however, only to judgments concerning either good actions or the omission of evil actions. In the case of the performance of an evil action, it must be said that the violation of certain moral commandments definitely informs us of a moral evil. In realizing that someone has committed adultery or murder, we know unquestionably that he acted immorally and that he is stained with a moral disvalue. But as long as we are not acquainted with his motive, the specific moral disvalue of his action has not yet disclosed itself. The fact, as such, only reveals that he acted immorally, but the degree of his immorality, the specific moral disvalue of his action, depends also upon his motives.

There are, however, some moral commandments that have not the character of an absolute "veto," which may be superseded by a higher obligation. Such, for instance, is the obligation to keep a promise or to fulfill a task that is entrusted to us. These formal moral obligations may be suspended by the call of higher-ranking goods, for instance, the moral or physical emergency of another person. Such a case is given when someone bound by a promise defers its fulfillment because he hears the cries of a man in extreme distress.

In such cases, we do not even know whether someone acted rightly or wrongly as long as we only know that he did not keep his promise. It may even be that his action was especially good. Yet we have to emphasize that the full moral picture requires in all cases the knowledge not only of the nature of the intent,[9] but also of all the attendant circumstances, the past life of the person, his education, psychic health, and so on. These elements, though not determining the quality of the moral value, nevertheless hint at the person's degree of responsibility and the symptomatic function of his action in relation to his entire personality.

There are, moreover, concrete prescriptions that have the character of advice to avoid situations that could become morally dangerous. In hearing that someone has placed himself in such a situation, we definitely do not know whether his doing so was morally wrong or not. It may be that it is a symptom of his having done something immoral, or it may be at least an indication of his thoughtlessness and carelessness. But it may also be that serious reasons motivated his action, which may, therefore, not be symptomatic of anything morally negative.

In these cases, obviously the knowledge of mere appearances does not justify any moral judgment. Here the moral datum is still completely indefinite. Something immoral may be at stake, but it may also be that the attitude is morally unobjectionable or even morally good.

Finally, it may be that not even an ambiguous situation is in question, but merely something shocking in the frame work of certain traditions, for instance, a young girl's being seen alone on the street with a young man. This is considered shocking in certain countries or in certain epochs, and in others not at all so.

Here nonconformity to the mere customs of a local tradition has no moral significance whatever.[10]

We want to broach the entire subject matter, extending from the most definite situation resulting from the conformity or nonconformity with a prescription, principle, commandment, rule, to the completely morally insignificant one. This will give us the opportunity of separating the chaff from the wheat in circumstance ethics, and, above all, of seeing the all-important role of general moral commandments and the impossibility of doing away with them.

But there is still another reason for enumerating different cases. The moral judgments of the Pharisees and of the self-righteous people, against which circumstance ethics is especially directed, are precisely characterized by the fact that they tend to treat these five different cases we have mentioned as being on one and the same level.

If we wished first to stress the shortcomings against which circumstance ethics rightly protests, we must now emphatically say that the thesis that circumstance ethics proposes as a solution is basically wrong. Moreover, it is necessary to point out that besides the positive motives, there are motives behind this movement that are of a completely negative character, such as the unfortunate idol of "freedom" and the desire to throw off the burdensome yoke of morality.

Sometimes we even find traces of the attempt to throw off our creaturehood.[11] Furthermore, a very prominent motive is the idea that man is entitled to be completely happy on earth, and connected with this is the desire to find a solution for all cases in which morality and divine commandments require a sacrifice of earthly happiness on our part.

In speaking of circumstance or existential ethics and of sin mysticism, we must, however, constantly recollect that it is not a philosophically formulated theory, but rather an intellectual movement, finding its expression in several youth organizations and in literature, for example, in the novels of Francois Mauriac, Graham Greene, Gertrud von Le Fort, and many others.

It is thus less a theory than a trend, whose extent varies greatly. The authors representative of the trend as a whole differ greatly concerning the point to which they push their ethical thesis. Gertrud von Le Fort goes further than Graham Greene. The latter goes much further than Mauriac. The passages quoted by the Holy Father and referred to previously go further than what we find in these novelists, for they come close to denying the validity of all general moral commandments.

In our appreciation and criticism of circumstance ethics, we shall therefore sometimes refer to the more mitigated forms of it, sometimes to the more radical. A certain positive appreciation will apply only to more mitigated varieties, certain criticism only to those that are radical.

Our aim is to combine two different tasks. One is to do justice to the elements in circumstance ethics that are valuable contributions, following the principle, "ex stercore, aurum" (gold from the dunghill). The other is to refute in detail the disastrous errors that circumstance ethics and sin mysticism embody, errors that have been condemned by the Holy Father. Both tasks will serve our ultimate goal of a clearer elaboration of Christian morality.

Rahner distinguishes clearly in his article between circumstance ethics and sin mysticism. They are definitely two different trends according to their theoretical content, constituting, from a philosophical point of view, completely different theses. But since, in an existential trend as expressed in literature and certain youth movements, both are interwoven, we shall not always be able in our criticism to separate them in a clear-cut way.

Circumstance ethics and sin mysticism pretend to a large extent to represent the truly Christian morality. In their fight against pharisaism, they often introduce themselves as champions of the Christian spirit, by opposing to a merely natural morality the mystery of the cross and the mystery of grace.

Refuting this pretension of circumstance ethics, we also hope to throw some light, therefore, on the specific character of Christian morality.

In order to understand all the moral problems underlying circumstance ethics, we shall begin with an elaboration of pharisaism in all its forms.

We want to point out emphatically from the very beginning that when we speak of sin, we in no way imply that a mortal sin is necessarily at stake. To commit a mortal sin presupposes not only the gravity of a violated commandment, but also several conditions in the agent, such as clear knowledge, full responsibility, and others. In no way do we intend to make any theological statements.

We are restricting ourselves to the moral problem and use the term "sin" and "sinner" in the sense of an objective discrepancy in relation to moral commandments, and the presence of attitudes embodying a moral disvalue and an offense against God objectively implied in it. We also prescind from the question of the presence or absence of sanctifying grace in given cases.

Endnotes1. Francois Mauriac, "The Woman of the Pharisees," translated by Gerard Hopkins (New York: Henry Holt & Co., Inc., 1946), p. 75.

2 "L'Osservatore Romano", April 19, 1952.

3. "Stimmen der Zeit," February, 1950.

4. Cf. Dietrich Von Hildebrand, "Menschheit am Scheideweg" (Regensburg: Habbel, 1954).

5. John 15:18-20.

6. Cardinal Newman, "Discourses to Mixed Congregations" (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1891), p. 165.

7. Ibid., p. 162-163.

8. Dietrich Von Hildebrand, "Christian Ethics" (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1953), Chapters 17 and 19.

9. In saying "intent," which traditionally is expressed by "finis operantis" many factors that have a bearing on the moral value or disvalue of an action or an attitude are tacitly implied. First, whether or not a knowledge of the object's morally relevant value or disvalue is given. Second, the clarity and depth of this knowledge; third, the motive, i.e., whether or not our will is a value response; fourth, whether it is a pure value response or a response also motivated by something subjectively satisfying, and several other factors. Cf. "Christian Ethics," Chapter 17,

p. 349.

10. There is always the possibility, of course, of eventually giving scandal to one's "weak brethren" (scandalum pusillanimorum), which should obviously also be taken into account from the moral point of view.

St. Augustine says: "It is nothing to the City of God what attire the citizens wear, or what rules they observe, as long as they contradict not God's holy precepts...." "The City of God," XIX, 19, p. 256.

11. D. Von Hildebrand, "The New Tower of Babel" (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1953), p. 10 ff.

Pharisaism is one of the most refined forms of pride. The satanically proud ma[2] wages war against all values. He wills to deprive them of their "metaphysical throne." Like Lucifer, he hates God and wants to dethrone Him. The Pharisee, on the contrary, seeks the satisfaction of his pride by adorning himself with "moral perfection." The Pharisee bows before a God, but a God deprived of His infinite holiness and His divine, inscrutable mystery. He admits a God, but only a God with mere formal absoluteness. He really loathes the quality of the divine. He hates infinite love and holiness.

The satanic type of man fights against God and all values. The Pharisee is more subtle. He does not formally wage war against values, not even against moral values. Yet he hates true morality and substitutes for it a merely legalistic and ritualistic morality. He wants to relish his piety and goodness, to glorify himself before a merely formal God. He identifies his cause with God's cause, instead of making God's cause his own. He is incapable of any true value response. The possession of moral values, as he understands them, is a mere means for the satisfaction of his pride. His resentment is directed neither against the important-in-itself[3] nor against a formal conception of God. It is directed against the divine, against God's authentic Holiness. This duplicity gives pharisaism the character of hypocrisy. But it is not the normal hypocrisy of a Tartuffe,[4] who cynically disguises himself as a saint in order to deceive other persons and attain his egoistic aims.

The Pharisee’s hypocrisy is much deeper and more refined than Tartuffe's. Tartuffe is a plain, sanctimonious swindler. He puts on a show of sanctity intended to deceive other persons for the sake of his profit and inordinate desires. The Pharisee aims at more. He is not content with a mere appearance of morality, whose only function is to dupe others. He wants actually and not only ostensibly to sit on the throne of morality, but a throne of morality regarded as a mere ornament and means of self-glory.

Pharisaic hypocrisy implies no discrepancy between mere appearance and reality, but rather between true morality and a desubstantialized, formalistic morality. This kind of hypocrisy implies a falsification of morality as such, not only the conveying of a false impression of one's character. Thus the Pharisee is, in a certain sense, really endowed with this pseudo morality. At least he is himself convinced he possesses it. Therefore, instead of cynically playing a role before others, he relishes his correctness. He plays this role not only in front of other persons as Tartuffe does, but even before himself and before God.

Tartuffe is, moreover, not primarily dominated by pride but rather by concupiscence. The make-believe holiness and the admiration that it commands are mere means to his profit. They do not really satisfy his pride. The Pharisee, on the contrary, is not a swindler like Tartuffe. He seeks satisfaction of a deep metaphysical pride and this by "abusing" God and moral values. He needs God for his glory, yet at a distance, and a God so formalized that no real confrontation can take place between his soul and the true world of God Such a confrontation would be unbearable for him and would unmask his intrinsic falseness. Though the Pharisee needs the moral sphere for his glory, it is only a desubstantialized and legalized morality at which he aims. True morality, especially Christian morality, is unbearable to him, and he hates it.

Pharisaism implies an existential hypocrisy, a constitutive hypocrisy. The Pharisee is possessed by the spirit of the lie. The Pharisee described in the gospel is mainly preoccupied with the ceremonial of the law. He is an enemy of the "mystery" of God. He ignores the "spirit" everywhere and reduces everything to the fulfillment of the letter. For him, the scandal of scandals is the Incarnation, the Epiphany of God, the "intrusion" of God's infinite holiness in the world of his own pseudo theology.

Abiding by the letter, which is so deeply characteristic of pharisaic falseness, must be clearly distinguished, however, from an analogous tendency proper to the mere functionary with his red tape. The metaphysical bureaucrat, for whom the serious things in life are wrapped up in juridical formulations, who believes everything that is inaccessible to juridical categories to be more or less a nebulous romance, is a dull and fossilized type. In no way, however, does he embody the deep, poisonous pride and hypocrisy and the hatred of all true goodness characteristic of the Pharisee. The shrinkage of the world resulting from the bureaucrat's reduction of it to his categories is primarily a symptom of mediocrity, dryness, affective sterility. Many moral faults and a good portion of pride and concupiscence may naturally intervene as well. The bureaucrat is rather ridiculous, boring, depressing, but one does not find in him, as in the Pharisee, an abyss of subtle and refined hatred of light, and such a complete absence of all goodness, bounty, and charity.

Cleaving to the letter on the part of the ritualistic bureaucrat also has a thoroughly different character. He overrates ceremonial laws. In his naiveté, he has an excessive regard for the letter. He has, nevertheless, a truly reverent attitude, and his devotion has a content of real service. He may be a prisoner of the letter and thus may underestimate and ignore the spirit, but his cult of the letter bears no immanent hostility toward the spirit.

For the Pharisee, on the contrary, the stress laid on the letter is a means both of fighting the spirit and of feeding his self-glory. There is no character of service in it whatever. The appalling character of the pharisaic attitude and its innermost falseness disclose themselves clearly as soon as we realize that the ceremonial law, which is essentially a service, is being abused as a means of self-glory.

Up to this point the analysis of the Pharisee has been restricted to his peculiar, ambivalent attitude of formal zeal for God and hatred of God's infinite holiness as revealed in Christ.

We must now turn to a further analysis of the quality of pharisaic pride, especially to an analysis of the Pharisee’s attitude toward his neighbor.

We have stressed in other works[5] that pride increases in proportion to the rank of the value that is used as a means for one's self-glorification. The real antithesis to humility is self-glorification in moral values and not the relishing of physical beauty, titles, a high position, intelligence, or artistic gifts. Pharisaism is the climax of this most poisonous moral pride.

The Pharisee’s attitude is possible only in a human creature. Cain's pride is diabolical and is primarily to be found in the fallen angel, Lucifer. Pharisaic pride, however, presupposes a human world and even a religious tradition. It is a form of pride that can unfold itself only in a specific situation. In the framework of the specifically human forms of pride, pharisaism is the most refined and the deepest, exhibiting the most hideous aspect of human pride. It is surpassed only by the satanical pride of a Cain, which is, as we saw, not exclusively or primarily human.

The Pharisee is characterized by a specific form of hard-heartedness that is even more repulsive than the hardness of a cruel and ruthless despot like Genghis Khan. It poses as the voice of justice and adorns itself with the shield of right and of moral correctness. A tyrant's hardness is the hardness of passion, of brutality, of injustice. His judgment is often an expression of his arbitrary mood. Pharisaic hardness, on the contrary, leans on the "sword" of morality; it is the hardness of pseudo justice. In "judging" sinners, the Pharisee holds aloft the "sword" of morality, but of a morality that he has voided and deprived of its intrinsic goodness.

The Pharisee embodies the very antithesis to charity to a far greater extent than a man who completely falls prey to his passions of ambition, lust of power and lechery, for example, a brutish monster like the Father Karamazov. These "monsters" are much less consistent than the Pharisee. They may suddenly be capable of surprisingly human attitudes, such as compassion or generosity. They may be so without abandoning their basic, evil attitude. The Pharisee, who is self-controlled, rational, who bases his hardness not on brute-like passions, but on a pseudo morality, is much more consistent in his hard-heartedness. In his attitude, the abyss of rational, self-righteous, cold hardness is revealed. It is the terrible void of an absolute absence of charity in those to whom our Lord says: "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you are like whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear just to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."[6]

We can now understand better why the Pharisee embodies the very antithesis to charity. True, we also find the very antithesis to charity in the satanically proud man, but he embodies likewise an antithesis to justice and to every moral value, in fact, to every value as such. The Pharisee, on the contrary, in his pseudo justice, embodies a specific antithesis to charity.

The Pharisee is further characterized by his enjoyment of a sense of moral superiority. "O God, I thank thee that I am not like the rest of men...."[7] The Pharisee gloats over the moral failures of others: they confirm his own moral superiority. Joy over other people's moral failures is not to be found in the same way in other forms of pride. The satanically proud man also rejoices at immoral actions of other persons, but for another reason. These immoral actions are not a springboard for his own moral superiority, but he sees in them a triumph of evil, a victory in his war waged against God. His joy over another person's fall—and the keenness of his joy is in proportion to the moral excellence of the other person—does not differ in its quality from what he experiences in his own wicked acts. It is the same joy that he experiences at any rebellion against God, and at any offense against Him, whether accomplished by himself or by others.

The Pharisee, on the contrary, rejoices over the moral failure of his neighbor because he makes it a steppingstone to his own moral superiority. He uses it as a means for the satisfaction of his pride, which, precisely, is centered on moral superiority or, rather, a pseudo-moral superiority.

Another type of proud man, the despot craving for power, does not rejoice in the moral failures of others. He does not care about their moral status, granted that they obey him and remain willing instruments in his hand.

Nor does the specifically vain man rejoice in the moral failures of another person. He does not need the moral failures of other persons in order to feel himself superior, for he is too convinced of his own superiority, too exclusively engrossed in his own goodness, beauty, and wisdom.

Like the Pharisee and the satanically proud man, the mediocre immoral man also rejoices when he witnesses failures in morally noble people. Yet his joy has a completely different function and character. He rejoices because he finds an excuse for his own sins in the failures of other persons. In no way does he feel morally superior to them, but his bourgeois conscience is allayed by the fact that he can say: "You see, other people do the same thing. After all, it is impossible to expect so much. Man is weak." Here the moral failures of other persons serve not as a source of satisfaction in one's own moral superiority, but as a consolation for one's own moral inferiority.

The mediocre immoral man does not elevate himself above other persons. He draws other persons down to his own level. Consequently, his joy does not have a proud, self-complacent, and self-righteous character or a cold hardness. It is rather a vile justification of one's own moral "mess," a specific joy of exoneration and alleviation.

Sometimes people rejoice, witnessing the immorality of other persons, because of the satisfaction of finding company in the realm of immorality. The general human desire for companionship is perverted, leading the person to rejoice at finding companions in moral weaknesses, vices, and aberrations. The source of this joy makes bad company disastrous. Apart from the danger of seduction, bad company tightens the fetters of vice.[8] One is "sheltered" by company. One rejoices in evil tendencies shared, in being understood by another, in not being condemned or reproved by him, in being able to glide downward undisturbed. Deplorable as this joy is of finding company in evil-doing (a joy that, by the way, is restricted to evildoers dominated by concupiscence and is not to be found among the different classes of sinners who are bound by pride), it not only clearly differs from the Pharisee’s joy over the moral failures of other persons, but it is also much less wicked. It has more the character of weakness and is not antithetical to charity, although it is incompatible with it. Pharisaic joy over the moral failures of other persons, on the contrary, is the very antithesis to charity. It embodies the deepest indifference toward the welfare of other persons, the coldest disinterest in their true welfare.

A further characteristic of the Pharisee is that, in order to attain his selfish ends without staining himself, he even induces other persons to do evil. He wants to use the evildoer for his own aims, but in a way that does not disturb his consciousness of moral correctness and pseudo justice. Again he abides by the letter and finds a solution that—according to the letter—leaves him without blame and nevertheless provides for the satisfaction of his hatred, his revenge, his selfish interests. The Pharisees incited the people of Israel to clamor for the crucifixion of Christ, and they wanted Pilate to impose the death sentence.

The specific refinement and ambiguity characteristic of the Pharisee disclose themselves in this procedure. He uses other persons—the evildoers—whom he looks down upon as sinners, in order to attain for himself an end that he could not attain directly without staining himself morally. He does evil, hiding himself behind the letter, by which he thinks he can remain morally "intact" and "pure." He satisfies his evil passions and preserves his consciousness of moral correctness.

The Pharisee tries, as it were, to void morality of all charity, even of the form of charity that is to be found in true justice. He attempts to borrow from true morality the unique humiliating power inherent in the moral verdict, and to use it as a weapon for his pride. He abuses the "metaphysical throne" of moral values, the objectively "strong" position of the morally good in order to crush his neighbor in a way in which only moral blame can crush. He tries to isolate the "judge" character of morality from all the intrinsic goodness of morality so as to profit by the moral sword in his campaign of pride, all the while fighting against God in the name of orthodoxy.

The Pharisee is above all characterized by the absence of mercy or, more precisely, by a spirit that is the very antithesis of mercy. Perhaps the antithesis of mercy is still more typical in the Pharisee’s case than the antithesis of charity. It comes to the fore in the Pharisee’s rigidity, disguised in the cloak of right and justice. The rigidity of pseudo justice, with its worship of the letter and its "judge-like" character, is the very antithesis of mercy.

The Pharisee hates mercy. He does not want to appeal to God's mercy,[9] but only to his own merits. He refuses mercy to other people and uses the rigid scale of the letter in order to condemn them. Thus the words of our Lord, "Misericordiam volo et non sacrificium"[10] (I desire mercy and not sacrifice) are the very death sentence pronounced upon pharisaism.

Endnotes1. Our analysis of the Pharisee is concerned with a classical moral type. We are not attempting an exegesis of the historical Pharisee.

2. Cf. "Christian Ethics," p. 442 ff.

3. Objective values in their formal aspects.

4. The main character of Moliere's comedy entitled "Le Tartuffe."

5. D. Von Hildebrand, "Transformation in Christ" (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1948), Chapter 7, pp. 139-41; "Christian Ethics," Chapter 35, p. 445

6. Matthew, 23:27.

7. Luke, 18:11.

8. It is the opposite analogy to that of our striking roots in the field of moral goodness through community with morally noble persons. In the above-mentioned case, one strikes new roots in the realm of moral evil through company with evil persons.

9. St. Augustine, "De Libero Arbitrio," translated by Francis E. Tourscher (Philadelphia: Peter Reilly Co., 1937): "And what is more unworthy of mercy than the unhappy man who is proud—too proud to accept mercy."

10 Matthew, 9:13.

We have briefly analyzed the characteristics of the Pharisee proper, the Pharisee condemned by our Lord in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican and on many occasions. Now, let us turn to certain derivatives of pharisaism, to certain mitigated forms of this perversion. Let us analyze the various types of self-righteous people.

There is a type of self-righteous man whom we may call the self-righteous zealot. He may have a sincere desire to obey God and to avoid offending Him. Yet in doing so he feels himself to be morally correct and relishes his correctness.[1] He looks down on the sinner in a hard and indignant manner. He experiences a certain joy, witnessing the moral failures of other persons, because he finds it pleasurable to be indignant at immorality. It will occur to him to have doubts about the legitimacy of this pleasure. Yet of him, too, it can be said, as Mauriac says of Brigitte Pian in his book, "The Woman of the Pharisees," that she always managed to find "some reason that would make her pleasure seem legitimate and fit it into the pattern of her moral perfection.[2]

Looking at a repentant sinner, the self-righteous zealot relishes playing the role of a merciful, compassionate person. After crushing a sinner under the weight of his indignation, he enjoys condescendingly lifting him up again in a gesture of sham mercy. This gesture also serves, however, to confirm the abyss separating him from the sinner.[3] His morality has a sour quality about it. He lives on the "qui vive" in order to detect immoral actions of other persons. He may feel some contrition about the moral failures in himself that do not make him topple from the pedestal of his self-righteousness. His examination of conscience takes place only within the narrow frame that his pride has constructed. As a result, he never experiences a true and deep contrition, that "breakthrough" before God, that full surrender to Him, in which one abdicates one's own pride, falling as a naked beggar into His loving arms. The self-righteous zealot is not disposed to admit his faults before other persons, except when this acknowledgment can be used as a means of proving to himself and to others his own humility.

He always possesses a good portion of that haughtiness which we described in our book, "Transformation in Christ."[4] He shuns feeling dependent upon other persons, experiencing indebtedness by gratitude. In short, he abhors occupying an inferior position in relation to others. He dislikes looking up to any other person or submitting to anyone other than those having God-given authority. Yet even with respect to the latter, he adopts a critical attitude. He feels himself entitled to judge their individual life and personality. He even enjoys finding some traits in them that call for a "reluctant" criticism. He always assumes to himself the position of one offering final judgment.[5]

The self-righteous man we are speaking of even feels himself to be guilty if he does not "judge" other persons. He may believe he represents and defends God's cause, but in fact he enjoys his role of judge and his own moral superiority: ". . . there are some people who choose God, but . . . perhaps God does not choose them."[6] Though in his own life he does not necessarily abide by the letter as against the spirit of moral commandments, he will do so with respect to others. Although he may have an idea of Christian morality for his own person that surpasses the mere letter, in judging other persons, he will abide strictly by the letter.

The mind of the self-righteous zealot incessantly revolves about moral questions. He is continually indignant, continually scandalized.

One of the most typical characteristics of this self-righteous man is his readiness to judge another person's actions and general behavior without ever taking the trouble to determine the real motives and all the specific circumstances attached to the case. He deems it sufficient to know that someone failed to conform to a moral commandment in order to pronounce moral sentence upon him. Consequently he handles all the different cases mentioned before[7] as being on one and the same level. When he hears that someone's behavior might be symptomatic of something immoral, he will feel fully justified in indignantly condemning that person's behavior as if he already had valid proof in his hands that the actions in question were unquestionably immoral.[8]

Even if someone's "crime" is merely a violation of local social tradition, the self-righteous zealot will respond with full-fledged moral indignation, the more so if an act that shocks society can in any way be related to indecency.[9]

The self-righteous zealot will always tend to suspect the worst in other persons' moral conduct. He will always presuppose a sinful conduct of life rather than a virtuous one, and will always anticipate his neighbor's prospective fall.

When his expectation turns out to be true, he will be highly satisfied, apart from his general satisfaction with others' moral failures. Should the future, however, not confirm his predictions, should a person prove to remain on the path of the Lord, the self-righteous zealot will resent it. He prefers to see the other fall rather than to have wrongly predicted his fall. He is characteristically opinionated and unshakable in his opinions.

One of the most hideous features of the self-righteous zealot is his abuse of particularly sublime Christian virtues. When he is rightly blamed by someone, he will neither respond with fury nor admit his fault. He will play the part of the individual, unjustly attacked, who, for the sake of Christ, generously forgives the wrong done to him.

From the very beginning, he will falsify the entire situation, "meekly" offering the other cheek, to receive "patiently" new, unjust offenses. He will thereby disarm the one who rightly has blamed him and will succeed in shifting the theme of the situation. Though he obviously has wronged the other person, he will twist the situation into an occasion for exhibiting his Christian spirit of forbearance.

This attitude embodies an infamous hypocrisy. The self-righteous zealot wants to avoid an objective admission of his fault or error. Unlike the obstinate, proud man who attacks the one who blames him and responds with fury, however, the self-righteous individual disguises his unwillingness to admit his being wrong, his proud obstinacy, and his opinionatedness in the garments of sublime Christian virtues. He succeeds with his disguise by forgiving when there is nothing to forgive and by offering willingly to God the pretended cross of being misunderstood and misjudged. He generously forgives where he should be asking for forgiveness, and where above all, he should admit his fault.

If once he were to beg for forgiveness, however, he would do so in a way that would never include admission of his error or a yielding in the conflict. He will accuse himself only of having failed to fight in the right manner or of having been overpowered because of his zeal. In his opinionatedness, he will never give up any position, never admit being wrong in his intention. He will only ask forgiveness for being too violent in his procedure. He will, moreover, accuse himself in such an extravagant fashion and will "humiliate" himself to such an extent that he will disarm the other person and even force the other person to elevate and praise him.

This last feature, namely the exaggeration referred to, is to be found not only in the self-righteous zealot. It is a very widespread, half-conscious trick used to disarm anyone who rightly blames us. It is to be found in most persons in a more innocent form, as a kind of escape, a ruse of man's nature. It leads one to say, "My fault is terrible, unpardonable," in an exaggeration by which he reverses the situation to such an extent that the person he has wronged is called upon to console him. Yet this escape has a radically different character from that of the self-righteous zealot's hypocrisy. It is a kind of "captatio benevolentiae" and in no way a show of humility as it is in the self-righteous. It is a rather infantile trick used to escape blame and all the disagreeable things connected with it. But with the self-righteous zealot it is quite otherwise, for he anticipates "being elevated" before God and before himself and other persons through a sham humiliation.

The infantile type of exaggerated self-accusation is similar to a trick used to silence the well-deserved blame of a friend. Someone blamed by a friend says, "I have always known and said that I am a hopeless, miserable sinner and that you waste your time on me. I have always said that you cannot love me on account of my utter unworthiness." The friend who hoped to give him a fraternal correction to help him to overcome his fault is now forced to give it up and to begin to console him, assuring him that he is, on the contrary, a lovable person and that this fault has no significance whatever.

Something analogous is to be found in Dickens's "David Copperfield" when Dora's tears succeed in frustrating David's attempt at educating her. In this case, however, it has rather the character of a "spiritual strike."

To return to the self-righteous zealot, he is, as we can see, tainted with some of the features of the Pharisee. Yet he clearly differs from the true Pharisee, in whom the gesture of self-complacency and self-glory takes place in a much deeper stratum. In the Pharisee, self-glorification is the basic and innermost attitude. It poisons his entire relation to the moral sphere and to God and fills him with the spirit of the lie. In the self-righteous man, the same attitude does not display itself at the same depth and thus does not affect his entire moral life. In him, the possibility of a sincere, general will to be morally good is not yet stifled, and on certain occasions we may find him assuming many a single, noble attitude. His basic moral attitude is not perverted to such an extent that it can no longer be endowed with any moral value. It is only corroded. This corrosion is a perversion, but still within the framework of moral goodness. The perversion of the full-fledged Pharisee places him definitely outside this frame. It locates him within the frame of plain moral wickedness.

We must clearly distinguish the self-righteous mediocre man from the self-righteous zealot. He is a type that is much more common than the zealot. He is the man in whom there is no deep moral striving, who wants to be morally "in order," so he can consider his life as "morally unobjectionable." He wants to be in conformity with moral commandments. Yet he tends to view them in the light of legal prescriptions. Unlike the self-righteous zealot, who does not necessarily stand by the letter in regard to himself, he will be quite content with the letter in regard to himself and will not trouble himself about the spirit. He wants to be dispensed from experiencing a real consciousness of man's sinfulness. He will certainly not deny it on a theoretical level and as a general statement concerning all men. But he wants to escape a real confrontation with God. He knows nothing about the experience that led St. Peter to say, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man...."[10] He wants to be dispensed from conscious actualization of man's metaphysical situation, from the "se humiliare" that every deep, true contrition implies. He attempts to escape it not by moral indifference, as does the morally wicked man, the debauchee, the criminal, or the enemy of God, but by remaining in conformity with the letter of moral commandments and thereby ensuring himself against feelings of moral insecurity. He is far from being a zealot and his mind is far from revolving incessantly about moral questions. He has not the moral acidity typical of the self-righteous zealot. On the contrary, he wants to pursue his private interests undisturbed—business, politics, science, family concerns, and so on. He wants "moral security" and "intactness," not primarily in order to relish them as the self-righteous zealot does, but in order that he may render to God what he has to render to Him, and to be able then to dedicate himself fully to "Caesar," that is, to his private life and its more or less selfish interests.

The mediocre correct man shares with the self-righteous zealot the habit of judging others' moral failures in a superior and hard way. He has not the "exalted" indignation of the zealot. He does not live on the "qui vive" concerning immorality. But he also enjoys his own correctness, and, from its secure level, he, too, judges "sinners" in an apodictic and superior manner. Together with the self-righteous man and the Pharisee, he feels no solidarity whatever with the sinner. Certainly, no one should experience any solidarity with sin, but, when faced with the fall of one's neighbor, every man should be reminded of his own moral frailty. Everyone should fear that he himself may fall, and should be aware that, had God's grace not protected him, he could have fallen as low.

The self-righteous, mediocre man, however, is not to be identified with everyone who is morally mediocre. He is not the man who has just a mediocre conception of morality and who minimizes all moral commandments to such an extent that they become acceptable to a mitigated pride and concupiscence.[11] Nor is he the man who has an "average" morality, the tepid, lukewarm man who is neither really good nor really bad. He is rather the correct mediocre man, whose mediocrity is combined with self-righteousness, with the desire of feeling himself to be correct. He abides strictly, and not tepidly, by the letter of moral commandments. Yet he abides by the letter alone, not by the spirit. He exhibits a moral hardness that not every mediocre person possesses. On the contrary, the tepid, average man is jovial and very tolerant of other persons' moral failures. As we saw before,[12] he rejoices about them only in order to alleviate his own conscience. But the self-righteous mediocre man's joy over the moral faults of other persons has the same connotation as that of the self-righteous zealot. It also derives from relishing one's own correctness and superiority when confronted with the sins of others.

With the self-righteous zealot, he also makes no distinction in his moral condemnation between the immoral action proper and the mere symptoms of a possibly immoral action. Whether dealing with true moral principles or with rules of conduct merely recommended by cautiousness, or with principles pertaining to local customs only, these two types of self-righteous men place them more or less on the same level and under the title: "One does not do such things."

The self-righteous man further considers all manifestations of morality and religious ardor not listed in his moral code as exaggerations and symptoms of unhealthy exaltation.

This feature is especially developed in the mediocre, correct man. He feels disturbed by any manifestation of the true breath of Christian charity and humility. His correctness and mediocrity are challenged by it. As long as these manifestations remain at a distance that does not force him to have to confront his life with this spirit, they will not bother him. As long as they are found in the lives of canonized saints—whose lives he will not read anyway—he will abstain from any judgment out of respect for the Church. This respect however, is not true reverence for the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, as the heavenly Jerusalem, as possessed of its infallible magisterium. It is rather loyalty to the Church viewed as an undisputed pillar of the society in which he traditionally lives—as the pre-given frame of the "society of the bien pensants."

For the self-righteous, mediocre man, the real norm is whether or not something is fit "for good society." A man whose religious and moral life carries elements capable of shattering the world built up by conventions and public opinion and the norms of bourgeois decency appears to him as exaggerated and unhealthy.

Mauriac brilliantly describes this mentality in his novel, "Vipers' Tangle," when Hubert writes to his sister:

"This religious exhibitionism of his amounts only to a criticism, direct or oblique, of the principles in which our mother brought us up from childhood. If he indulged in a murky mysticism, it was only that he might use it as a stick to beat that rational and moderate faith which has always held a place of honor in our family. Truth is poise. (La verite, c'est l'equilibre.)"[13]

If he accidentally becomes acquainted with some deed or certain traits of the saints that confront him with the "folly of Christ," with the "two-edged sword of the word of God," "extending even to the division of soul and spirit," he will shrink back and turn away, saying, "The saints also have sometimes exaggerated."

But when he is confronted with extraordinary Christian traits in a living person, he will openly despise him and consider it as bad taste and unpleasant exaggeration. He not only looks down on the sinner, but also on the "exaggerated" piety, which he considers shocking.

The moral "ardor" of the mediocre, self-righteous man, displays itself in the negative direction only, in the rigidity of his judgment of sinners. For himself, on the contrary, he will be content with a minimum, with a correct observation of the letter, insofar as strictly obligatory moral and religious precepts are in question. Nor do we find any ardor in his response to extraordinary virtues in other persons. There is no proportion between his negative rigidity and his positive mediocrity.

This applies primarily—as already mentioned—to the self-righteousness of the mediocre, correct type. But even the self-righteous zealot has a tendency to consider heroic, extraordinary manifestations of the spirit of Christ as exaggerated. Though he has no minimalist attitude in his own moral life, though he is not mediocre, he still pours more ardor into his indignation over "sinners" than into his veneration for saints or into his response to extraordinary manifestations of the Christian spirit. When he is confronted with the breath of Christian charity and of Christian freedom of spirit in his neighbor, he will view them with suspicion and even be scandalized as soon as they interfere with his disposition to pass sentence upon sinners.

But in spite of the fact that the two types of self-righteous men share several traits in common with the Pharisee, traits that poison and pervert their morality, they still clearly differ from the real Pharisee. Indeed, there is a yawning abyss between them and such a man. As we saw before, self-righteous men do not have his fundamental attitude of pride, his basic hatred of God's infinite goodness and holiness. The God they worship is not a purely formal one, deprived of His divinity. Their perversion displays itself within the frame of morality itself and on the basis of a positive moral attitude. It is not a form of anti-morality as pharisaism is in fact. They do not share the hypocrisy and falseness of the Pharisee. They are not basically and thoroughly wicked.

Although in individual cases it may be difficult to determine whether a man is a Pharisee or only self-righteous, it is of the greatest importance to make the distinction. It would be a grave injustice to consider the self-righteous and the mediocre, correct men as real pharisees. It would further distort the entire problem of the moral superiority of the noble sinner with respect to a certain type of correct man. That the real Pharisee ranks morally lower is not difficult to see. It is only after having made a clear distinction between the Pharisee on the one hand, and both the self- righteous zealot and the self-righteous mediocrity on the other, that we are able to reach the real problem underlying circumstance ethics. We must now set aside the Pharisee and concentrate on a comparison of the two types of self-righteous men with the tragic sinner.

There is, however, still another type of man, who, although he abides by the letter of moral commandments, greatly differs from the three above-mentioned types. He has no pharisaic feature whatever. He is the timorous man, who lacks freedom of spirit and who has more a servile fear of God than a filial fear of Him. He sincerely wants to obey God, and he has the general will to be morally good, but he lives in a constant state of fear and is looking for confirmation that will assure him that he is on the right path. He will never dare to make any decision without being backed up by the letter of moral prescription. He will never have the courage to follow God's call when it manifests itself in a special situation through the values at stake alone, but only when it is backed up by a formulated prescription. In a certain way, the timorous man is the very opposite of the above-mentioned self-righteous mediocre man. Though they both abide by the letter of moral prescriptions, the timorous man does it because he fears to offend God. He does not restrict morality to the letter, but he always wants the reassurance of the letter.

The mediocre, correct man, on the contrary, wants to save himself the trouble and discomfort of feeling himself to be a sinner. He is eager to fulfill the letter of the prescription for the sake of attaining this aim and for the satisfaction of the pride that he feels in knowing himself to be "correct." The letter of the prescription has here the character of a minimum, whereas in the case of the timorous man, it has the character of a maximum. Notwithstanding this antithesis and the completely opposite motives leading to their respective abiding by the letter, they are nevertheless both antithetical to the true Christian freedom of spirit. The timorous man, although incomparably superior to the mediocre, correct man from a moral point of view, exemplifies an antithesis to the saint, insofar as he does not seek peace of conscience in the imitation of Christ, in a loving confidence in God, in the loving delivery of himself and abandonment to God, in faith and hope, but rather in exterior criteria, in the "letter of the law." By that he ultimately attempts to escape from a real confrontation with God and from the "risk" of getting into such a depth. He is satisfied to substitute formulas for this deep confrontation. He is looking for a guarantee of his conformity with God without taking the risk that a decision based exclusively on a full moral intuition implies, a decision based on the spirit of a moral commandment, though possibly in contradiction to the letter of that commandment.[14] His case is somewhat analogous to that of the man who always wants an extrinsic guarantee of truth, which he may use as a "bridge of asses," instead of having the courage to grasp a self-evident truth in a direct insight when he is faced with it.

The timorous man also shares with the three afore-mentioned types the characteristic that his judgment about other persons is orientated to the letter of the commandment instead of to its spirit. He will not judge them "from above." He will not manifest any hardness. Still less will he rejoice in any way over his neighbor's moral failures. But he will shrink from anyone who offends the letter of a moral prescription. He will be scandalized in the sense of the "scandalum pusillanimorum." His moral timorousness will prevent him from abiding by any measure other than the letter.

There are many different nuances within the frame of this moral timorousness, ranging from spiritual laziness to a typical scrupulousness. The latter is clearly the milder form of the two, morally speaking. Although the different types of moral timorousness are clearly distinguishable from the self-righteous type, whether zealot or mediocrity, they also are antithetical to the true Christian freedom of spirit.

We lay stress on the "abiding by the letter" that is due to moral timorousness, because circumstance ethics also contains a protest against this attitude, without, however, clearly distinguishing the type of man involved from the others, the Pharisee, the self-righteous zealot, or the self-righteous mediocre man. This protest comes to the fore in the emphasis it places on "personal risk."

In their fight against general moral commandments, the champions of circumstance ethics lay great stress on "personal risk," as they call it. Since the timorous man shuns taking any personal risk, he is also included in the general attack launched by circumstance ethics.

We shall see later on how disastrous in effect is the interpretation of the freedom of the children of God offered by circumstance ethics. Abiding by the letter of a commandment instead of by its spirit is certainly wrong, but it effaces neither the validity of general commandments nor their indispensable role in our moral life. It does not even cast suspicion on the "formulation," that is, on the letter as such. The fact that the spirit is expressed in the letter has a great value, a value that is not invalidated by the fact that abiding by the letter while ignoring the spirit is a thoroughly wrong attitude.

It is not the fault of the commandment or of its formulation, if, instead of taking the spirit as the real measure, someone abides by the letter in an insipid way, sacrificing the spirit in order to preserve the letter. We shall see later on that it is only in extraordinary cases that, in order to follow the spirit of the commandment, we must contradict the letter. It would be quite wrong to believe that breaking with the letter is, as such, something either indifferent or even, to a certain degree, positive. Normally, the letter and the spirit are in agreement. It is only in extraordinary cases that they contradict each other.

1. Francois Mauriac, "The Woman of the Pharisees:" "She was a logical-minded woman who kept to a straight road marked out by clearly labeled principles. She never took a step that she could not immediately justify." P. 81.

2. Ibid., p. 80.

3. Ibid ., p. 26.

4. Cf. Chapter VII, "Person and Action."

5. "...she regarded it as her privilege to watch over every soutane that came within her orbit." Mauriac, op. cit., p. 83.

6. Ibid., p. 75

7. Cf. Introduction, p. 8 ff.

8. "Gracious Heaven! what worse could they do than kiss?" Mauriac, op. cit., p 75.

9. "I was too ignorant as yet about love to have noticed that my stepmother could never approach the subject calmly, but that as soon as it was mentioned she became, as it were, all worked up." Ibid., p. 16.

10. Luke, 5:8.

11. Cf. "compromise type" in "Christian Ethics," p. 417 ff.

12. Cf. Chapter 1, "The Pharisee," pp. 18-19.

13. Francois Mauriac, "Vipers' Tangle," translated by Gerard Hopkins (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, Ltd., 1952), p. 204.

14. As we shall see later, servile and timorous obedience to the letter of the law may in a particular case lead one to go clean against the intention of the legislator.

Circumstance ethics claims that a sinner may love God more than the self-righteous, whether zealots or mediocrities. In many novels we can find the following antithesis: on the one hand, the self-righteous man who observes all the moral commandments, and on the other, the sinner who, though in conflict with one or several moral commandments, is more charitable, more humble, more true, and more sincere than the self-righteous man with his hypocritical virtue.

Circumstance ethics goes even further. For it sometimes claims that a sinner may be morally superior even to a mediocre, morally correct man who is not self-righteous—superior as a personality, more disposed to a real conversion and to a real love of God and neighbor. Although the correct man abstains from grave sins, he may lack all positive virtues. He may be conventional and dull, ignoring the real moral drama of mankind and, consequently, according to circumstance ethics, inferior to certain sinners.

Before entering into a discussion of the conclusions that the champions of circumstance ethics draw from this antithesis, we must analyze the type of sinner whom they regard as superior. It is clearly not the diabolically wicked man, such as Cain or Iago.[1] Nor is it the man who cynically disregards all moral commandments, such as Richard III; nor the ruthless proud sinner, such as Don Rodrigo[2] or Don Giovanni.[3] It is primarily the sinner who is aware of his sin and regrets it and who suffers because he is separated from God. Only such a sinner is regarded as having a greater love of God than the self-righteous man or the merely mediocre one.

We must, however, not only exclude many types of sinners who, because of the gravity of their sinning and their basically sinful moral attitude, cannot simultaneously be aware of their sinning and regret it. We must also exclude sinners who because of their good moral status bear no relation to the problem that has arisen in circumstance ethics. Among such we have, first of all, the converted sinner. Conversion and God's pardon create an utterly different situation. The sinner has risen from his fall. The screen separating him from God has fallen. We need only think of the good thief and of the words addressed to him by Christ.[4]

We are concerned with the man who in sinning is fully aware of what he is doing and regrets it, although he cannot muster the strength to give it up. Such may be the case, for instance, when a Catholic has contracted a marriage with a divorced woman. He is aware of his sin and suffers because he is separated from God. Yet he has not the courage to break up with her. On the one hand, he knows that if he were to do so, it might crush her completely and throw her into utter despair. On the other hand, he loves her so much that he lacks the strength to separate himself from her. Yet he is fully aware of his sin and deeply suffers as we have said, because he is separated from God. According to circumstance ethics, he may still love God, and he may be charitable and humble.

Or let us take the case of a drunkard. He began drinking in order to forget a great sorrow. He sought an escape. But with time, drinking became a habit, even a passion dominating him. He is fully aware of his sin. He is deeply humiliated by his vice. He hates it, but he is too weak to overcome it. This man may still love God, and he may be charitable and humble, although he commits something objectively sinful.

The sin we are concerned with must have a truly tragic character. In the case of an invalid marriage, the sin is tragic only when a mutually deep and ardent love is in question. The sin can be called "tragic" only if renouncing this marriage would mean an ordeal implying a crucifixion of hearts, and what would therefore be tantamount to a renunciation of earthly happiness.

If someone should marry a divorced person because of financial interests or social advantages, the sin committed would not be tragic, but obviously ignoble. Such despicable motives exclude the possibility that the sinner while fully experiencing his sin, really suffers from the kind of conflict just described. Awareness of the sinfulness of his action and deep sorrow over it are the distinctive marks of the tragic sinner. In the case of the drunkard or the man who is the prisoner of a passion that he is too weak to overcome, noble motives, it is true, are not to be found. But the tragic character is here rooted in the fact that his sinful passion overpowers him—thus the sinner can really hate his sin and deeply suffer from it, though lacking the strength to overcome it.

Although in each case (the man who marries a divorced woman and the drunkard), the motives clearly differ in their quality and rank, in both instances the awareness of sinfulness and deep sorrow over it may be found. This characteristic is, as one can easily see, the element that separates the tragic sin from the ordinary sin.

It must, however, be stressed that in speaking of a tragic sin, we in no way intend to imply that there is any moral trial in which a man is objectively bound to fall. We want to point out emphatically that the term "tragic" bears no connotation whatever that this sin is unavoidable or that it is excusable. It only indicates a special type of sin springing from weakness rather than from real wickedness.

A completely different type of sinner who is morally noble notwithstanding her sin, is Sonja in Dostoievski's novel "Crime and Punishment." She sells herself to save her family from utter misery. She sins by doing something objectively impure and by co-operating with the sin of others. But her sinning carries the intention of making a terrible sacrifice in order to help others. She does not yield to a passion, nor does she choose something immoral, moved by human, noble motives, or as a result of a clash between a noble objective good for herself and a moral commandment. On the contrary, she considers her action as a great sacrifice, implying the surrender of her most precious objective good. For the sake of saving other persons, she is doing subjectively just the opposite of what the tragic sinner does. Whereas the tragic sinner acts in contradiction to a moral commandment in seeking something for himself, either a great objective good for himself[5] or the appeasement of a passion, Sonja apparently chooses the morally good and sacrifices a high personal good. She sins, however, because what she sacrifices is not only a high objective good for herself, but something that is God's in a special way,[6] and in any case, her sacrifice is morally forbidden. She overlooks the fact, moreover, that in doing so she co-operates with the sin of her partner, whose evil act clearly implies both a sinful "finis operis" and a sinful "finis operantis."

Sonja is not value-blind in the normal sense of the term. She sees the value of purity and the disvalue of impurity. In this respect she is, therefore, pure. She would never do something impure for the sake of satisfying a passion. The very fact that her action is experienced as a supreme sacrifice tells us clearly that she is not impure. But the idea of a supreme sacrifice blinds her and leads her to overlook the fact that there is more at stake than an objective evil for her, namely, something objectively sinful, and objectively and subjectively sinful insofar as her partner is concerned.

The question arises as to how much she is responsible for her sin, which is in a peculiar way mixed with a specifically moral intention. It is a very unique case of moral error, definitely differing from the various types of moral value blindness. But it is a moral error, and she cannot be exonerated from all moral guilt. Something is morally wrong in her. Otherwise she could not overlook the objective sinfulness of her deed. But it is an uncommon case, in which the readiness to sacrifice her happiness out of charity blinds her to the sinfulness of this very sacrifice. In this case, patently, a high moral standard and a deep love of God coexist with this objective sin. It is much easier to understand the coexistence here than in the case of the tragic sinner. The incomparable moral superiority of Sonja over a self-righteous, correct man is evident. In her case, it is not only that nobility of character can be found notwithstanding her sin, but a morally sublime act is subjectively interwoven with her objective sin.

It is of the utmost importance, however, to understand that, notwithstanding all the positive moral elements included in her attitude, she commits a sin. The highest moral intention can never do away with the objective sinfulness of her deed. All the charity invested in this sacrifice cannot compensate for its immorality. It remains true that we have to deplore her way of acting, though we may be deeply touched by her noble charity and heroism.

Sonja's case is especially illustrative for several reasons. First, it concerns the danger of an exalted heroism that believes that to sacrifice oneself for others is in any case morally good and pleasing to God. It is part of the widespread error that the harder something is for us the more noble it is.[7] In contradistinction, however, to the ideal of "duty" in the Kantian sense, with its arid, hard, stoic quality, there is here an overstressing of altruistic heroism as such, a danger of "exaltation," which overlooks the fact that a great objective good for me may also have a morally relevant value that definitely forbids my sacrificing it. In the sacrifice here in question one arrogates to oneself a sovereignty that is incompatible with "religio."[8] This sacrifice implies the arrogation of a right we do not possess as creatures. It implies an irreverence and disorder similar to the case in which someone offends God out of "charity" for a human person.

Secondly, this case is especially instructive because it reveals the moral impact of the "finis operis" and shows clearly that the noblest intention based on a moral error cannot save and cleanse the objective immorality of certain acts.

Yet it is not the type exemplified in Sonja but the tragic sinner, who circumstance ethics claims is in the final analysis endowed with a deeper love of God and with more humility than the self-righteous, correct man.

This antithesis, however, is ambiguously formulated. Self-righteousness is a horrible, moral disvalue. It also offends God in a specific way. There is a certain equivocation in calling the "tragic sinner" a sinner, and the self-righteous individual whether zealot or mediocre correct man, a "non-sinner." In truth, he also sins through his self-righteousness, by his hypocritical pride, which affects and even falsifies his entire moral life. It is a vice that is more difficult to circumscribe, which is less accessible to clear-cut moral commandments, but it is in obvious antagonism to charity and humility and thus implies a specific offense against God. Instead of opposing the "sinner" to the self-righteous, we should rather say that the sin of self-righteousness is more grave, a deeper offense against God, a greater separation from God than the sin of the tragic sinner. It is, above all, a sinful "habitus" pervading the entire moral life of a person—not a single, sinful deed or an isolated vice. Moreover, it is accomplished without awareness of its sinfulness. Clearly this does not mean that here a type of ignorance is in question that would in any way suspend responsibility. It is, on the contrary, the kind of blindness for which we are fully responsible.[9] And in this case, it is even not so much a blindness for the disvalue of self-righteousness as such, but rather a closing of one's eyes to one's own self-righteousness. It is the typical case of self-deception, in which one succeeds by disguising the satisfaction of vicious trends under the cloak of virtue. As a result, the self-righteous man looks upon himself as especially virtuous whereas, as we have seen, the tragic sinner is aware of his sinning.

Self-righteousness is especially hideous because it corrodes all positive moral attitudes, whereas the "tragic" sinner can be generous and charitable and can do many morally positive things, notwithstanding his sinning. The vice of self-righteousness, on the contrary, is like a poison that affects every domain of the moral life, and poisons especially all virtues and good actions.

Thus it is quite true that the tragic sinner may still be better than the self-righteous man, not because of his sinning, but because his sin is less grave and does not corrode in the same way the entire life of the individual as self-righteousness does.

The superiority of the tragic sinner over the sinner who is self-righteous discloses itself when we think of the following elements.

In the tragic sinner, we can still find the metaphysical seriousness of morality. Though he is in conflict with the moral law, he still stands within the orbit of that true morality which extends into eternity. In his tragic fall, he still testifies to the "breath of the eternal,"[10] which pervades true morality, because of his deep suffering, his experience of the weight of guilt. The tragic sinner stands in this "space," not only objectively—this applies to every sinner—but subjectively as well. He himself is aware of the confrontation with God. His personality, therefore, is still in contact with the true world of God. Looking at him, we are drawn into the drama of true morality.

The self-righteous zealot, on the contrary, narrows the realm of morality and draws it down to a bourgeois level. The atmosphere that his morality gives forth is no longer filled with the breath of eternity. He surrounds himself with a morality deprived of its eternity dimensions, of its intrinsic breath-taking grandeur.

Clearly, he also stands objectively before God in the great realm of true morality. But subjectively he has severed himself from this realm. His ideal of morality is dry, rigid, and acid. It sets up a barrier hindering the light of true morality from pervading his mind.

If, seeing the tragic sinner, we are reminded of the great drama of man and our heart is attracted and moved by the intrinsic beauty of morality, if in our compassion for a sinner we experience all the misery of being banished from the "domus Domini" and, in the same breath, the intrinsic lovableness of moral goodness, it is quite otherwise in the presence of the self-righteous man. For in him morality appears as a narrow and depressing bondage. His very personality discredits morality. He himself has become a blind, shutting out the light of true morality.

All this applies also to the self-righteous mediocre man. He is, perhaps, to an even greater extent, like an opaque glass veiling the face of true morality. His mediocrity hinders the light of true morality from pervading his mind. In his presence we are in danger of seeing morality in a completely wrong light, and even of being disgusted by it.

Some champions of circumstance ethics, however, claim, as we saw,[11] that the tragic sinner not only may rank higher than the self-righteous man, whether zealot or mediocrity, but that he also may be morally preferable to a mediocre, correct man who is not self-righteous.

It is only here that the antithesis "sinner and non-sinner" may be made, although, in a certain sense, every man who is not a saint is a sinner. But the mediocre, correct man who is neither self-righteous nor in any sharp conflict with a moral commandment does not sin. He is not stained with moral disvalues, but he lacks positive moral values. Although he does not murder or commit adultery, although he goes to church on Sunday, his charity is very mediocre, and his personality does not possess real purity or humility. He will never do more than the letter of a commandment strictly requires. He is petty, conventional, more or less superficial, even incapable of any of the great human feelings. But with all his mediocrity he does not sin as the tragic sinner does. He observes the letter of moral commandments, but he does not understand the breadth, height, and depth of their "spirit."

It is not yet the moment to enter into a discussion about whether or not the "tragic sinner" ranks higher than a mediocre correct man. Perhaps it is true that many morally positive attitudes can be found in the tragic sinner that the mediocre correct man does not possess. What matters is to see that it is not the sinning that is responsible for the morally positive qualities, or the correctness that is responsible for mediocrity. The mediocre, correct man is morally poor and deficient in spite of his correctness. The tragic sinner possesses certain moral values in spite of his sin. To see any disadvantage in the absence of a glaring conflict with a moral commandment, is absurd. To view "correctness," in the sense of the absence of such a conflict, as a kind of superficial smoothness betrays both a blindness to the intrinsic ugliness of every sin—including the "tragic sin"—and to the intrinsic beauty and depth of innocence.

It is this sort of blindness that is at the bottom of the so-called sin mysticism. As in the intellectual field there exists a perversion according to which an interesting, complicated, intelligent error is preferred to a simple, evident truth, so there exists also a moral perversion that leads us to prefer the dramatic, interesting tension of a tragic sin to simple innocence. We shall come back later to the fundamental error of sin mysticism. Here it suffices to stress that the real moral inferiority of the "correct" man does not derive from the absence of a tragic, sinful conflict, but from his shallowness and from his lack of real humility and charity.

Yet it is not only the tragic sinner who has been contrasted with the self-righteous man. It is even the mean sinner, the avaricious, hardhearted, impure man, who, notwithstanding all these horrible moral disvalues, has, in the very depth of his soul, a longing for God—he whose heart is not really anchored in money and lechery, but thirsts for God's love, which he has not yet found. Such a man Mauriac opposes to the self-righteous, mediocre people whose hearts are really anchored in money and social standards, though they are correct Christians according to the letter.

Here the problem is a completely different one from that which is found in the case of the tragic sinner. It is no longer the discrepancy between on the one hand, habitual, noble qualities and a basically good direction of will and, on the other, the moral disvalue of an action, or the incapacity to live up to one's moral intentions in the sphere of action. Here habitual immorality, an evil character, and vices are contrasted with a hidden desire and longing. Thus the discrepancy in this case is between the real desire of the heart and the vices resulting from one's vain efforts to satisfy this desire with money, lechery, and fame. This type of sinner may—according to Mauriac—remain a prisoner of his vices especially because the self-righteous and mediocre Christians he has met did not make him acquainted with the true Christian spirit. There is also tragedy in these sinners, though of a completely different sort from that of the above-mentioned tragic sinner. The morally positive element in these sinners is much less discernible than in the tragic sinner. It is hidden, covered by repulsive vices, and, in a certain sense, only potential. Only someone with a loving, merciful heart, someone who approaches sinners in a truly Christian spirit, will detect this hidden noble desire, the "cor inquietum donec requiescat in te."[12] And he alone will be able to lead this desire out of the labyrinth of prejudices, bitterness, and passions in which it has lost its way.

Even this sinner may be preferable to certain self-righteous mediocre people who want to be in conformity with the minimum of moral laws, as it were, in order to be able to serve both God and Mammon. Yet, in this case nobody should try to derive from this antithesis any glorification of sin. Obviously it is in no way because of the sinning and the vices that this man may be preferable to the self-righteous correct man. It is, on the contrary, incredibly surprising that in spite of his moral squalor, he may still be preferable because of the underlying, deep noble desire. The stress lies here on the mystery in man's nature and on the difficulty of discovering his ultimate yearnings, also on the necessity of approaching the sinner in the hope of finding in him an underlying, noble desire. One emphasizes here that ostensibly correct Christians may in reality be lacking in any real love and longing for God, and may, moreover, be self-righteous, and consequently still greater sinners.

The lesson contained in Mauriac's novel "Vipers' Tangle" is that of making us aware of how easily we may be deceived in our moral evaluation of persons. It is exemplified in the paradox that even in a really terrible man there may live, in the very depth of his soul, a noble longing that may yet victoriously manifest itself despite the moral filth; and this very thirst places him above the self-righteous correct man.

We must add, however, that it would be a grave error to extend this evaluation to all sinners. Granted that we are never able to "judge" any sinner—including the Pharisee in the sense of imposing a final sentence, the pity that Mauriac invokes in the preface to his novel[13] is a pity of a sort other than that which we must have for the immortal soul of every sinner, even of the most diabolical monster. Here it is a pity that does not apply to a Don Giovanni, a Don Rodrigo, a Richard III, a Father Karamazov, or a monster like Iago. It would be ridiculous to claim that a Don Rodrigo or a Richard III is preferable to a self-righteous, mediocre, yet morally correct man. They are obviously incomparably worse than the self-righteous correct man. It is a very special type of sinner in whom a noble thirst underlies all his perversion. But it is in no way allowable to apply the same attitude to the ruthless enemy of God who is filled with pride and concupiscence. The kind of sympathy due to the former would be inadequate with respect to the latter. Moreover, we must stress that also in the self-righteous, mediocre, correct man there is still a positive element that makes him far superior to the ruthless enemy of God. Granted that his mediocrity makes us despair, that his self-righteousness makes him repulsive, that the hypocrisy of disguising his egoism with garments of moral correctness and piety disgusts us, nevertheless, in his very correctness there still lives a faint respect for God and a feeble link to the moral law. With all our aversion, we should never wish that he would lose this remnant of obedience to God. We should, on the contrary, be glad that at least this positive element is still to be found. We should still feel the solidarity that unites us with him as against the gulf that separates us from the open, ruthless, moral monster. Our horror of his mediocrity must never make us unjust to him. This is a great danger in many noble minds, whose hatred of mediocrity makes them lose sight of the fact that sin is worse than mediocrity.

As for the self-righteous zealot, however, we must stress the point that we may likewise find in him an underlying, frustrated noble thirst and desire. The sincere good will, the earnest striving for moral perfection that these self-righteous zealots often possess reveal the presence of a noble moral intention that has been perverted and distorted through several unfortunate experiences. Self-righteousness and acidity may in fact be the result of frustrations and deceptions. This does not mean that they thereby become excusable, or that they lose their character of being grave moral faults. This psychological origin does not take away one's responsibility. But it makes us realize that this self-righteous zealot also calls for our special sympathy. We may say, "What a pity that this person's good will, which the right spiritual director could have oriented to a high moral standard, has degenerated into such an odious perversion as self-righteousness." But here we may clearly see the noble basic moral attitude and the discrepancy between it and self-righteous hardness and moral acidity. In this type we may find something analogous to the case of the sinner mentioned before.

We have attempted to expound upon the data from which circumstance ethics starts. Its champions rightly stress the horror of self-righteousness and the emptiness of mediocrity. But apart from their unfortunate thesis, which claims the invalidity of general moral commandments,[14] behind their antithesis of the tragic sinner and the self-righteous individual and even the mediocre, correct man there lurks a disastrous tendency either to glorify[15] or at least to belittle sin. Sin is even sometimes encouraged as a possible "felix culpa." Circumstance ethics further overlooks the fact that there are goods having a morally relevant value, the ignorance of which is always morally bad and illegitimate. No motive, however noble, can compensate for the disvalue of actions violating these goods.

Finally, its exponents arrogate to themselves the role of champions of the spirit of morality against a narrow abiding by the letter, not seeing that in many cases it is impossible to fulfill the spirit while departing from the letter. The following chapters will deal with these different errors. We shall begin with a clarification of the terms "spirit" and "letter" and an analysis of when and where we can fulfill the spirit though departing from the letter, or fulfill the letter though neglecting the spirit.

1. In Shakespeare's Othello.

2. One of the main characters of Manzoni's "The Betrothed."

3. Main character in Mozart's opera of the same name.

4. "Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise." Luke, 23:43.

5. Cf. "Christian Ethics," notion of objective good for the person, p. 49 ff.

6. D. Von Hildebrand, "In Defense of Purity" (New York: Sheed & Ward,), Chapter III.

7. Henri Bergson is quoted as having said: "The moral rule which appears to me the highest and most fruitful is to choose of two duties the one that costs the more." (Foris Delattre, "Les Dernieres Annees d'Henri Bergson," Revue Philosophique. Nos. 3, 8, March, August 1941, p. 138.

8. Cf. "The New Tower of Babel," p. 11 ff.

9. St. Augustine says: ". . . but he that thinks he lives without sin does not avoid sin but rather excludes all pardon." "De Civitate Dei, The City of God," translated by John Healey, Everyman's Library (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1947), XIV, 19.

10. Soren Kierkegaard: "The ethical is and remains the highest task for every human being. The ethical is the very breath of the eternal." "Post- Scriptum," pp. 99-100.

11. P. 36.

12. St. Augustine, "Confessions" I, 1: "Our heart is restless till it rests in thee."

13. "Vipers' Tangle:" "The man here depicted was the enemy of his own flesh and blood. His heart was eaten up by hatred and by avarice. Yet, I would have you in spite of his baseness, feel pity, and be moved by his predicament. All through his dreary life squalid passions stood between him and that radiance which was so close that an occasional ray could still break through to touch and burn him: not only his passions, but, primarily those of the lukewarm Christians who spied upon his actions, and whom he himself tormented. Too many of us are similarly at fault, driving the sinner to despair and blinding his eyes to the light of truth." P. vii.

14. Cf. Chapter X, "Basic Errors of Circumstance Ethics."

15. Cf. Gabriel Marcel, "Man against Mass Society," translated by G. S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952):

I am thinking for instance of a play I propose to write in which we see a young married woman, all keyed up, confronting her husband, who is just about to play the host, with all the respect due to such a personage, to a rival and imitator of Mr. Jean Genet, with this question: "Tell me, Jo: can you swear to me that in the presence of Jacques Framboise, who has just come out of prison, you experience nothing that at all resembles a feeling of superiority"? Jo, confused and quite taken aback, remains silent, The lady presses her point: "Answer me, Jo: the whole future of our relations depends on your answer." In her discreet way, she then adds that Jo ought to feel a little ashamed, if anything, of wearing the white flower of a, legally at least, blameless life....

If I have allowed myself a somewhat farcical digression here, it is to throw a clearer light on those generally inverted values which a contemporary literary elite—an international elite, too—is rapidly today tending to adopt for its own. And here, also we find conformism and "right-thinking persons." One would be judged a "wrong-thinking person" in such circles if one persisted in pointing out that theft, in itself, is a reprehensible act. Pp. 5-6.

In previous chapters, we referred several times to the antithesis of letter and spirit. It is necessary to analyze these notions more minutely. It is especially important to consider when and where, in relation to moral commandments, a distinction between letter and spirit can be made. Before discussing this problem, however, we must distinguish various meanings of letter and spirit.

We must first distinguish three formally different meanings. According to the first, the term "abiding by the letter" designates a failure to distinguish the essential from the nonessential in propositions, moral commandments, or precepts. Thus, in abiding by the letter, one clings to a mere formulation, to something accidental and exterior. This can be for very different motives, as we shall see later on, but the result is always the same—mistaking the surface for the content. "Spirit" here means the real meaning of the proposition or commandment, its essence and true intention.

By "letter" one sometimes refers to actions, and by "spirit," in the same context, to the underlying motive. A man who abstains from fornication because he is a misogynist, or gives money to the poor merely in order to make an impression, observes the letter of the commandment but fails to fulfill its spirit. Such a discrepancy of "letter" and "spirit" (in this second sense) is, as we know, quite common. Here, abiding by the letter assumes the character of a mere abstention or of acting in conformity with the commandment but without the moral motive and intention.

"Abiding by the letter" can also mean that one isolates a moral commandment, cutting it off, as it were, from the "living organism" of morality. "Letter" here means the isolated commandment, and "spirit" the spirit of morality as such, the "norm" of moral goodness, implying the hierarchy of values. Thus abiding by the letter in this case means to ignore all the self-evident restrictions of a commandment, restrictions arising from the fact that this commandment is overruled by a superior one, or because certain conditions dispense us from fulfilling this commandment. As for "spirit," it refers here not so much to the real meaning of a special commandment as opposed to an accidental detail of its formulation, but rather to the spirit out of which this commandment also ultimately flows and to all its implications. Hence, in this third case, to abide by the spirit means to co-operate fully with our conscience, to confront God in everything, and to take the trouble to examine all circumstances in the light of Christ's commandments in order to understand what God's will is in a particular situation.

In all three cases, "abiding by the letter" may frustrate real obedience to the commandment in question. In the first case it can do so by ignoring the very meaning of the commandment and abiding by mere nonessential details. In the second case it can be brought about by accomplishing something exteriorly and, as it were, accidentally, without the required motive, namely, the moral intention and the spirit of obedience. In the third case it can happen by falsifying the intention of the commandment, isolating it and neglecting all the implicit conditions of its application.

Having distinguished these three formally different notions of "letter" and "spirit," we shall now analyze various exemplifications of the different attitudes and motives that lead us to abide by the letter instead of the spirit.

First, there exists a naive and foolish way of following the letter. It is exemplified in people incapable of grasping the real meaning of a statement or a precept. They do not understand the essential; they "miss the point." They register the letter only, getting stuck on the nonessential and accidental features of a proposition. This is often the case with simple people unaccustomed to abstract thinking. They adhere to accidental examples, to literal formulations, instead of grasping the real point, the meaning, the intention of what has been said.

Sancho Panza in Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote" illustrates this type of holding to the letter in answering Don Quixote's admonitions concerning his governship of the island. Don Quixote says that Sancho should not lose sight of "the consideration of your having been a swineherd in your own country,..." to which Sancho answers: "true when I was a boy I kept swine, later when I grew towards man I looked after geese and not after hogs."[1] Instead of grasping the spirit of Don Quixote's words, namely that he should not forget, as governor, the modest circumstances of his youth Sancho considers only the kind of animal he watched over—an item having no importance whatever for the "spirit" of the admonition.

This kind of abiding by the letter can be traced back to intellectual insufficiency. It has a naive and ludicrous character. It is altogether different from pharisaic adherence to the letter.

When practiced with regard to moral commandments and prescriptions, however, this holding to the letter may lay bare a kind of obstinacy and spiritual laziness. One does not take the trouble to penetrate to the spirit. One considers oneself to be especially obedient and exact by mechanically applying a rule, a moral prescription, or a piece of advice without making use of one's intelligence. In short, it is the rule applied with blindfold eyes.

In the worst of cases, this way of mechanically obeying advice or a command may even be motivated by the intent of carrying out an unwelcome order to the point of absurdity, or at least by the desire to withdraw from any sense of personal responsibility of one's own. Up to this point, "letter" always refers to accidental details, while "spirit" to the true meaning of a proposition.

Another type of "abiding by the letter" is to be found in the morally timorous man.[2] He stands by the letter because it is the letter alone that suffices to set his conscience at peace. If departing from the letter of a commandment were still in conformity with the spirit, he would nevertheless abide by the letter. Even if the spirit of a moral precept should, in an extraordinary situation, require him to depart from the letter, he would never take the risk of doing so.

This type of fixation on the letter is not restricted to the timorous man, as we saw in the previous chapter. It may also be motivated by a kind of rigoristic pedantry. It does not have the character of enmity against the spirit, but it results rather from a lack of freedom of spirit. One insists on a fulfillment of the letter. Anything that departs from the letter, even if such departure were truly consistent with the spirit, is rejected as insufficient. This "abiding by the letter" is accomplished with the consciousness of being morally stricter than others. The pedantic rigorist believes himself to be more conscientious, and he suspects laxism in every failure to correspond to the letter (even when departing from the letter is in accordance with the spirit). To refer to the spirit instead of the letter is already something to be suspicious of in his eyes, an attempt to elude the commandments. In other words, for him the spirit is always so linked to the letter that any deviation from the letter necessarily implies a betrayal of the spirit. According to him, one fulfills the commandment in a fully conscientious way and takes the commandment seriously only by holding strictly to the letter.

It is this type of "abiding by the letter" that is the very opposite of freedom of spirit. In these cases, "letter" may refer to the nonessential formulation as well as to the isolation of a precept, while "spirit" may refer to the true meaning of a precept or to the spirit of morality as such.

A fourth type of conflict between letter and spirit can be found in the case of the typical bureaucrat. For this type, whom we have mentioned in another chapter, only juridically formulated things count, or at least only that which is subject to juridical categories. The commandment to love God and our neighbor seems to him nebulous and vague. "Thou shalt not kill," he will accept as precise and realistic. He will tend to place the juridical sphere above the moral and will try to reduce all moral obligations to juridical ones.[3] That part of morality that withstands this attempt is not acknowledged by him, or it is considered as more or less romantic. He abides by the letter because the letter alone is real for him. In this case again, "letter" may refer to the details of formulation as well as to the isolated commandment, while "spirit" may refer to the true meaning as well as to the spirit of morality as such.

A fifth case of abiding by the letter is to be found in the mediocre man, who contents himself with the letter of a commandment and does not grasp the invitation to do more than the commandment literally requires. He is the man who says, "I am a good Catholic; I fulfill my Easter Duty every year. The Church requires only that we go to confession and communion on Easter. Why should I do more?" To abide by the letter here means contenting oneself with the minimum of what is strictly required in its literal formulation, instead of grasping the invitation to transcend this minimum. Instead of seeing that the letter is here meant as a mere minimum, one interprets it as embracing the totality of what is desirable, and as expressing everything that the spirit of the commandment encourages. This kind of adherence to the letter does not have a hypocritical character, nor does it involve any enmity against the spirit, leaving no room for it; but it is the specific mark of moral mediocrity in its different forms, whether a naive mediocrity or a self-righteous mediocre correctness. In this case "letter" means the isolated commandment as opposed to the spirit out of which this commandment flows.

We now come to the last type of "abiding by the letter," which is typical of pharisaism. We find it exemplified in the Gospel passage in which the Pharisees blame our Lord because he cured a sick man on the Sabbath. The spirit of the third commandment forbids work on a day that should be a day of contemplation and leisure in the highest sense of these terms. But the fact that this day belongs to God in a specific manner in no way means that it excludes charitable actions, especially the help that an emergency demands. To interpret the Sabbath commandment in the sense of excluding every activity, to miss the radical difference between working and acts of charity—not to speak of a miraculous healing—is a specific evasion of the spirit in holding to the letter.

Here a commandment is misinterpreted and isolated. It is upheld against the spirit of morality and God's will. The specific hypocrisy of this attitude consists in disobedience carried out in the name of obedience. Here both meanings of letter and spirit are clearly involved. But the specific mark here is that "abiding by the letter" is voluntarily and purposely accomplished. It springs from the hypocritical desire to evade the spirit while simultaneously conserving the consciousness of being morally correct.

It is especially in judging other persons that one abides by the letter. "Abiding by the letter" assumes then the character of an odious rigidity and a means for the Pharisee’s merciless sentence. It becomes an instrument of pseudo justice. It betrays the desire to condemn other persons and one's satisfaction when one succeeds in doing so. It is part of the general desubstantialization of morality that is so typical of pharisaism.

In enumerating the different cases of "abiding by the letter" we can clearly detect two basic attitudes:

First, one follows the letter while ignoring the spirit. "Abiding by the letter" here means to be contented with a minimum of moral effort. Such is the case of the previously mentioned mediocre, correct man.

In the other basic attitude, "abiding by the letter" means that for the sake of moral safety one never wants to depart from the letter. One is content only when, in addition to the spirit, the letter is observed. Such is the case of the morally timorous man.

In the former case, the letter is substituted for the spirit. In the latter case, the letter is made the indispensable condition and guarantee of fulfilling the spirit and thus, as it were, imprisons the spirit. This distinction, which we mentioned already in the foregoing chapter when discussing the timorous type, is here more emphatically restated because it is of the utmost importance in answering the questions of when and where a distinction between letter and spirit can be made in the field of moral commandments, or of when and where this distinction can be applied. We shall see later on that whereas in many cases it is impossible to fulfill the spirit in departing from the letter, to observe the letter without fulfilling the spirit is always possible.

When dealing with certain commandments we shall see that "abiding by the letter" is neither pedantry nor timorousness. For although it may not yet be the totality of what is morally required, it is morally obligatory.

We have already mentioned that it is always possible to elude the spirit though one fulfills the letter. It is possible with respect to all moral commandments, as well as to positive commandments, and in all three meanings of letter and spirit.[4] Someone may abstain from committing adultery in the literal sense, while yet committing it, as it were, spiritually. Or to take another case, the Pharisees, in inciting the people of Israel and Pilate to crucify Christ, did not violate the letter of the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," but they clearly violated the spirit of the commandment.

The same applies to positive commandments. Someone may attend Mass on Sunday, thereby fulfilling the letter of the commandment. But if he reads a newspaper during Mass he clearly violates the spirit of this same commandment.

The same is true if we take "letter" in the sense of action and "spirit" in the sense of the motive underlying this action. If someone approaches moral commandments as if they were only conventional rules of conduct, submitting to them in the same spirit and with the same motives that lead him to wear fashionable clothes, he eludes the spirit, though he fulfills the letter. He evades the spirit by failing to co-operate subjectively, that is, by failing to respond to the values that are the very reason of the commandments. He is not motivated by these values, and still less is he motivated by obedience to God. He thus remains in a merely exterior, conventional contact with these commandments[5]

The same applies to positive commandments. Someone who goes to church only because he wants to make a good impression on his employer, in order to be promoted, but lacks faith and the spirit of obedience to the Church, fulfills the letter but evades the spirit.

A fulfillment of the letter while avoiding the spirit is also possible if we take "letter" in the sense of isolated commandments and "spirit" in the sense of the spirit of morality as such, that is, the spirit out of which these commandments flow. Thus someone may fulfill the commandment of going to church on Sunday but only by leaving a helpless, sick relative who should be taken care of. It is also possible with respect to moral commandments: we may fail to love God and our neighbor though we abstain from adultery, homicide, theft, and sacrilegious acts.[6]

As soon as we ask when can the spirit be fulfilled though departing from the letter, a completely different picture is offered to us. First, we must say this, that if we take "letter" in the sense of the literal formulation of a commandment and "spirit" in the sense of the intention and meaning of the commandment, it is never possible to fulfill the spirit without fulfilling the letter when moral commandments including an absolute veto are in question. For example, an absolute veto is found in the moral commandments: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not curse," or "Thou shalt not sacrifice to idols or deny God." Here it is absolutely impossible to claim that someone could ever depart from the letter without violating the spirit, that is, without sinning.

It makes no sense to say that although someone committed adultery in the literal sense of the word he remains true to the spirit of the commandment—if we take "spirit" in the sense of the meaning and intention of the commandment. The formulation here is such that "spirit" necessarily includes the letter, so that the possibility of any departure from the letter without violating the spirit is excluded regardless of the circumstances.

The same applies to positive commandments. It is impossible to say, "I do not go to Mass on Sunday, but nevertheless I fulfill the spirit of this commandment."[7] Here the formulation is such that a distinction between letter and spirit in the sense of unessential and essential cannot be made. It is impossible to fulfill the spirit in departing from the letter, since the letter is the true and strict formulation of the spirit. Though one can fail to fulfill the spirit in fulfilling the letter, as we saw before, here one never can fulfill the spirit without fulfilling the letter.

Only in the field of moral advice, casuistic applications, or rules of prudence, can we deviate from the letter that is, if we always take "letter" in the sense of nonessential versus essential.

If the formulation is such that nonessential details are included, departing from the letter insofar as those details are concerned is clearly possible without violating the spirit. In these cases it might even be imperative to depart from the letter in order to remain true to the spirit.

The same applies if we take "letter" as being the action and "spirit" as the required value response or the true motives on account of which an evil action is omitted. When moral commandments with an absolute veto are in question, it is impossible to depart from the letter without sinning. When morally relevant goods, which are contradicted, injured, or destroyed, are such that an action in relation to them is morally bad and sinful independently of the underlying motives, the spirit can never compensate for the moral evil of the action itself. The action is morally bad in any case and is an offense against God. It is always and everywhere imperative to abstain from this type of action. It is always strictly obligatory to fulfill the letter in this sense.[8]

In cases in which the moral disvalue of an action presupposes a specific intention and motive underlying this action it may be possible to depart from the letter without violating the commandments. There are many actions that may have an opposite moral significance according to the motive underlying them. If someone mutilates an enemy by cutting off his arm, it is a horrible crime. If the surgeon does the same in order to save a patient's life, it is not only morally justified, but even morally good. If a father makes his child suffer by punishing him out of real love, because of a true interest in the child's welfare, his action is morally good and even under certain circumstances obligatory. But if someone makes a child suffer in the same way because of sadistic tendencies the action is morally despicable. In all these cases a discrepancy of letter and spirit could occur, but clearly no moral commandment refers merely to these actions without including a reference to the motive in the formulation of the commandment. Commandments, insofar as they refer to actions that receive their moral significance only through a specific intention and through specific motives, include in their formulation a reference to the nature of the intention.

As far as moral commandments including an absolute veto are concerned, it is also impossible to depart from the letter without violating the spirit, in the sense of the "spirit of morality." It is impossible to commit adultery or fornication and to remain true to the spirit of morality. Never and nowhere could these actions be morally unobjectionable. This type of discrepancy is only possible insofar as commandments are at stake that can be overruled by another moral obligation. We are, for instance, morally obliged to keep a promise, granted that the content is morally unobjectionable. But if having promised to do a job at a certain time, or to visit someone, we suddenly come upon a person whose life is in danger, or if any great emergency occurs, we have to break our promise in order to lend our assistance. Here it would be morally wrong to "abide by the letter," for the very spirit makes it imperative for us to abstain from fulfilling this commandment. Hence in this case, it is not only allowed but even morally obligatory to depart from the letter.

The same applies to positive commandments. If we are facing the alternative either of going to Mass or of endangering a sick relative in leaving him alone, we have to depart from the letter (here, of the positive commandment), following the spirit of morality, which imposes on us the obligation to remain with our sick relative.

The foregoing analysis has shown that when confronted with moral commandments including an absolute veto, it is in no circumstance possible to depart from the letter without violating the spirit, that is, without sinning. This applies to all three possible meanings of "spirit" and "letter."

Thus it is a great error of circumstance ethics to view unshakable obedience to the fundamental moral commandments including an absolute veto as merely a narrow "abiding by the letter." In interpreting the conduct of the moral man who in any circumstance respects the absolute veto of moral commandments as being the narrowness of the pedantic bureaucrat or of the self-righteous man, the adherents of circumstance ethics try to discredit the validity of true moral commandments and precisely disregard the spirit of morality.

It is here that one of the main errors of circumstance ethics comes to the fore. Its champions want to oust all general moral commandments, emphasizing that every moral decision is unique. We shall see later on[9] the impossibility of expelling general moral principles. Here we want to stress that all the arguments in favor of the "spirit" and against the "letter" and all the criticism of mediocrity prove absolutely nothing against the absolute validity of the general moral principles because their absolute veto excludes any possibility of ever departing from the letter.

The exponents of circumstance ethics deal with all moral commandments as if they received their moral significance only through a certain intention, and ignore the fact that certain actions are morally illegitimate and sinful, whatever the intention may be.

1. Don Quixote, Volume II, Chapter 42.

2. Cf. Chapter II, p. 30 ff.

3. Cf. Chapter V, "Freedom of Spirit."

4. There are, however, commandments that exclude "ab ovo" any discrepancy of letter and spirit. This is the case with respect to the fundamental commandments of Christ: the love of God and the love of neighbor. Here the

commandments refer to attitudes and not to actions; thus, on the one hand, they already include the "finis operantis;" on the other hand, the very nature of these attitudes implies many actions and excludes many others. These commandments also exclude all those actions that are immoral already by the "finis operis". These prescribed attitudes are not vague, but are utterly concrete and precise. The love of God implies obedience to all His commandments: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word."

In the last chapter of this work we shall see how the structure of these two commandments "upon which dependeth all the laws and the prophets" reveals in a specific way the nature of Christian morality. Here we want to stress that when dealing with these two commandments we cannot even fulfill the letter without fulfilling the spirit—the formulation is such that letter and spirit coincide. It is the unique case in which any antagonism whatever between letter and spirit is excluded.

The only discrepancy that can possibly be found here is the one between the appearance of charity and true charity; but it would be clearly a very artificial and inadequate terminology to call merely apparent signs of charity, "letter," and true charity, "spirit." The antithesis of a mere verbal charity and true charity is clearly of another type than the one of letter and spirit.

The two commandments of Christ, however, not only include other commandments such as the "Decalogue," thereby making it impossible to keep the former while disregarding the latter; they also do not substitute for them in the sense of making the formulation of other moral commandments superfluous, for these other commandments indicate precisely what is implied by the love of God.

5. Clearly, we do not intend to say that this case of fulfilling the letter and evading the spirit constitutes a sin. It is merely the absence of a moral value.

6. Eluding the spirit in the sense of "spirit of morality," with respect to moral commandments is mostly combined with the absence of adequate motives.

7. We here take for granted that there is no valid excuse.

8. There are, however, moral commandments in which a difference between letter and spirit can be made in a certain sense. "Thou shalt not kill" is an absolute veto, and no intention, friendly as it may be, would allow us to arrogate to ourselves the right to decide on the life of a human being. Even euthanasia committed out of compassion remains a terrible sin. However to kill in self-defense when assailed by an aggressor is morally allowed. Some radical pacifists who consider every killing as included in the commandment "Tho