command reveals itself does there come about the shattering of the self-assurance of our ethos which is the presupposition of a critical ethics. Only there does the seriously meant question arise.
b. “What shall we do?” is the question. Are we seriously asking what we should do? It might be that here, too, a substitute has to be set aside before we can say that the question is seriously meant. It might be that we have not yet heard the metallic ring of the “shall,” that we have openly or secretly clothed this concept with the very different concepts of what is convenient or useful or valuable to us. From the hedonists of antiquity to Max Scheler, as is well known, the ethical question has often been put in this way and answered with an imperative that is formulated accordingly. There can be no doubt that the question of the orientation of our conduct, in virtue of which it is meant to be directed toward what is convenient, useful, or valuable, is not only a possible, and even in its own way serious question but also that its concern ought to be expressed in a comprehensive discussion of the concept of command and of what is commanded. (There will be an opportunity for such a discussion in the second chapter on the command of God the Creator.) It may be asked, however, whether we have really reached the concept of command at all, whether we may legitimately formulate imperatives at all, if, like Scheler, we simply ascribe to the concept of value a necessity that claims our conduct. For the highest value [is] seen being and the highest being has seen value.4 If we have this necessity in view, have we really asked what we ought to do? For in the concept of the “ought” do we not recognize again the concept of origin which fundamentally transcends being? Can we not talk of an “ought” only when it is a question of unconditional truth and not merely of truth that is or that is seen? No value, not even the highest, can claim to be unconditional truth, and least of all, one might think, when this highest value is to be found, as Scheler believes, in human personhood,5 since the concepts value, seeing, and being are all on the same level, the level where there is only conditional and not unconditional truth. How else can a value be validated but by being seen, experienced, asserted, and estimated by us as a value? Is it too much to demand that if an imperative or command is understood as a claiming of our existence, of our life, of the only life we have, it must qualify as such in some better way than this?
We are perhaps not challenging too sharply the seriousness that an ethics of material values, a kind of higher physics, might have as such, if we state that we cannot be content with this kind of seriousness when it is a matter of the concept of the “ought,” if we say that we can speak of an “ought” only when unconditional truth—truth of the first degree and not the second, like seen truth or the truth of being—is the necessity which impinges on human willing and doing, when by such an “ought” we understand a claim which does not need to be validated by my seeing and experiencing its validity but which is grounded in itself and comes to me in such fashion that without asking about what I see or experience I have to validate myself before it in respect of the question how far I can meet it. Assuming that I must take the concept of the “ought” more seriously than is possible in the framework of an ethics of values, and assuming further that I ask only on the presupposition of the serious content of the concept: “What shall we do?”, it is plain that my serious question is a radiant witness that I know the “ought.” But how? How indeed? Not from an experience of value, for in such a case I should not know it and my question would not be serious in the stricter sense. Obviously, then, from the fact that the “ought” has made itself known to me, that the self-grounded claim has come to me, and I have been placed under its standard. As I cannot ask about God, but only about an idol of my own heart, without confessing, not that I have seen, experienced, and grasped God, but that God has spoken to me, that I am known by him, so—and we are speaking here of one and the same reality—I cannot ask about the “ought,” but only about the substitute of a being of value or value of being, without confessing that I ought, that the command has been spoken to me and has been accepted by me. If I seriously ask: “What shall I do?”, I have already understood that my existence is claimed by the good and that this claim, the command of the good, is given to me. My question, then, does not mean that I am raising a theoretical problem, as the rich young ruler obviously did [cf. Mark 10:17–31 par.], but that I see that a practical problem has already been raised whose problem is my problem, so that I present and clarify it to myself and others, which is clearly the point of ethical reflection. Seriously asking: “What shall I do?”, I have directed myself away from general and theoretical problems to my own practical reality. It is here that the truth of the good is known or it is not known to all. It reveals itself to me in my own decision as I do it or not, as I am judged by it or saved.
c. “What shall we do?” is the ethical question. We shall now consider whether we mean it seriously when we ask about what we should do. This again is not self-evident. The question: “What shall we do?” can also be a question of curiosity which does not have to be an ignoble curiosity. Practice, too, can legitimately become the subject of theoretical interest. This happens in psychology. And psychology is not in itself a disreputable matter. It becomes this, as happens, only when it confuses itself with ethics or even with theology. Ethics, ethical reflection as theoretical inquiry for the sake of inquiry, with no orientation to what ought to be done, is, of course, an impossibility. We cannot simply want to know what is good. One wants to know with a view to doing it or not doing it the very next moment, with reference to the total seriousness of the decision that has to be taken the very next moment. Hence one cannot learn to know the good merely in order to form a judgment about it or to take up an attitude toward it. Often enough we all of us seem to be asking about the good, but we only seem to be doing so. We ask: “What shall we do?”, but again like the rich young ruler we do so with certain practical presuppositions which we do not regard as open to question, which we are resolved not to give up in any circumstances, and in relation to which we would rather restrict our freedom. We have not thought of asking about that whose doing or nondoing will at once mean our salvation or damnation. We ask frequently and attentively but we really ask, not “what shall we do” but “what can we do.” We ask so as to supply material for the second question whether we will do anything at all or whether we would rather do this or that. This ethical investigation, which may sometimes be conducted very carefully, this abstract reflection and consultation with others, takes place under the proviso that we may take a very different view from that corresponding to the results of the investigation, and on the assumption that it does not finally matter much what view we take, it will probably be the everyday ethics familiar to everybody. Why should not this type of inquiry find its right and seriousness along the lines of psychological research? The only thing is that we must have no illusions about its theoretical character, about the fact that fundamentally it is not ethics, and that we must not exchange its seriousness for that event of the literally intended question: “What shall we do?”
If we take this question literally, we do not have in mind what we might do after an intervening moment of free reflection but what we will in all circumstances do the very next moment—or what we will perhaps not do, but then under the whole judgment of nonfulfillment or transgression of the command. I have again no time at my disposal, no intervening moment, no neutral place in time where I might first consider the good in its being and take up an attitude toward it. I cannot put off the decisive decision, but it stands directly at the door. I know that I will now decisively decide. It is a matter of doing what I should. What I should, however, is the claim directed to me, not the good in essence but the good in act, the good that comes to me, in relation to which I must reply the very next moment and not the one after, in relation to which my next step will bring to light my adequacy or inadequacy. Asking what I should do, I know that it is not in my choice to give my act the character of decision but that whatever I do it always has this to my salvation or damnation, that my existence is the answer to the question, not a question that I put, but the question that is put to me. Here again, then, there is no room for the discussion of theoretical problems. If I ask what I should do, then I know that the very next moment I myself am the answer to this question. My putting of the question can again have only the point of making clear to me this situation of mine, of making
