can prevent forest fires” with the invented correlative “Only YOU can prevent global warming” will advance the contrast, because of a difference between the two admonitions. Intent on fulfilling the first admonition, I will diligently monitor my decisions and actions when I go camping this year, and as a result of that diligence I will cause no forest fires. There will be one forest fire less than otherwise there might have been. Even if I am equally intent on fulfilling the second admonition, though, there is no due diligence for me to perform. I can take measures to reduce my carbon footprint, but global warming will continue inexorably, not measurably or discernibly slowed. My part in forest fires differs from my part in global warming, and the difference between the two exemplifies the difference between ethotechne and ethopoesis.
In ethotechne, my intention governs my agency: I can, for example, cause a forest fire by myself. In contrast, in ethopoesis my intention does not govern (is not adequate to) my agency. I cannot cause global warming by myself. In the ethotechnical realm, intention and effect converge; in the ethopoetic realm, they diverge. Consequently, in the ethotechnical, teleological and deontological approaches to ethical concerns will tend to concur, and in the ethopoetic, they will tend to contrast. My having good intentions will suffice in relation to forest fires, because those intentions, since they govern my agency, will yield effects consonant with the intentions. My having good intentions will not suffice in relation to global warming, because, absent their governing my agency, effects consistent with them need not attend them. In ethotechne, my intention and agency relate to one another in such a way that I can decide not to cause a forest fire, but in ethopoesis, my intention and agency relate to one another differently: I cannot simply decide not to cause global warming.
Primary to ethotechne is occasion: I can start a forest fire only when I am on a camping trip, in the forest, not when I am at home in the city. In ethopoesis, though, conditions are primary. I live in a time period and within a human social arrangement in which hydrocarbons are the primary energy source, as a result of which carbon is being released into the atmosphere faster than it can be absorbed by natural processes. It is not a specific occasion on which I cause global warming; it’s the conditions in which I move and live that cause global warming. I might wake up one morning and decide that the time is right to set a forest fire. There is no occasion, though, for my bringing about global warming: I am engaged in doing so continually, not occasionally.
The forest fire can be described in a clear and adequate way by a simple causal chain. I decide to leave a campfire burning when I’m not watching it, or I carelessly throw a cigarette butt out the window of my car as I drive through Yellowstone; that action lights dry leaves on fire and that fire expands into a large area. I do one particular thing, from which follows another particular thing. In ethopoesis, though, the cause/effect relationship is not a simple causal chain, but a complex causal network. It’s not that I, or any single human, decided to burn hydrocarbons as a primary energy source, but that many things (the invention of the internal combustion engine, the mass production of motor vehicles, the burning of coal for energy, and so on), various decisions made by various people in various times and various circumstances, merge into a complex nexus of causes and effects, plural, that create the phenomenon we name global warming.
The simple cause/effect chain occurs locally. I light my cigarette in one place, and throw it out the window in one place. The fire begins in that place and spreads to a region continuous with that place. The event begins as, and remains, local. But in ethopoesis, the cause/effect nexus and the event or phenomenon is global. Though I am currently seated at my computer, drawing electricity, that electricity was produced somewhere else, and the emissions from the production of that electricity are being released not here in my home office, but where the energy was produced. The food that I eat is not itself, here at my dinner table, releasing hydrocarbons, but I purchased it at a grocery store, which got it from a distributor, which procured it from farms in Mexico, so it was shipped over great distance. Hydrocarbons were burned during the shipping, rather than at the moment of my meal, and released across that distance, rather than being released here. The effects of global warming don’t follow me around like the little rain cloud in a comic strip; they cloud the entire globe. The strengthened storms and higher temperatures might affect someone on the other side of the planet more directly than they affect me.
For ethotechnical concerns, a rule is adequate. For example, the rule not to leave campfires unattended is adequate, in contrast to the rule not to use fossil fuels. Or, again, the rule don’t put your elbows on the table is an adequate rule, in contrast to the rule be a good parent, which needs so much further interpretation and amplification that in an important sense it’s no help. It’s a good principle in that my children will be happier if I manage to fulfill it, but it’s no good at all in the sense that it offers me no guidance. In ethotechne there is an applicable rule that can be enacted; in ethopoesis, there is not. In this regard, the contrast between ethotechne and ethopoesis resembles that in Christian theology between law, which seeks to enumerate the rules that will be adequate to guide me through any and every occasion, and grace, which changes my condition.
The ethotechnical calls for a particular behavior. In relation to forests, I am called upon not to leave campfires unattended, and not to discard cigarette butts that I have not fully extinguished. The ethopoetic calls not for a particular behavior but for an altered, elevated personhood. My particular behavior of raking up leaves manually, rather than using a motorized leaf blower, may be positively inflected, but it is so minuscule as to be invisible, utterly ineffective. In the ethopoetic, my whole person is called into question, and called to involvement. If in ethotechne I am told “You must alter your behavior,” in ethopoesis I bear Rilke’s charge that “You must revise your life.”
In the ethotechnical, there is an interpretation of the given charge that makes my fulfilling that charge possible to me. Not so in the ethopoetic, where no interpretation of the charge would make it possible for me to fulfill it adequately and fully. I have never caused a forest fire, and I never will cause a forest fire. I will never leave a campfire unattended, nor will I ever throw an unextinguished cigarette butt out a car window. But I could not prevent global warming. It’s not that I am failing to do something that would prevent global warming, but that nothing I can do would prevent global warming. Global warming ought to be prevented, but no interpretation of that call results in its being possible for me to fulfill the call.
The ethotechnical offers itself in either/or terms. Either I have or I have not left a campfire unattended. Either I have or I have not thrown a cigarette butt out the window. The ethopoetic offers itself as a continuum. I might participate more actively or less actively in the creation of global warming. I might participate more self-consciously or less self-consciously, more reflectively or less reflectively. I might maximize my complicity in global warming, or minimize it. I might, for instance, regularly drive my very large SUV to and from the office or on long cross-country drives, which would increase my complicity, or I might walk to work or ride my bike, or take shared commuter transit, any of which would decrease my complicity.
The ethotechnical offers itself as, or purports to work by, summation. If all visitors to national parks in the United States next year follow Smokey’s advice, then the sum of those separate and individual decisions will be that no human-caused forest fires will occur. By contrast, matters of ethopoetic concern operate according to wholeness, a wholeness that exceeds summation. It is plausible to think that this year every human being might decide not to leave campfires unattended; it is not plausible to think that this year all humans will cease to burn fossil fuels. The greater the number of individuals who follow the appropriate rules, the smaller the number of forest fires caused by humans. In contrast, even the decisions by a great many people to stop using hydrocarbons would not stop the process of global warming. I might myself cut my carbon footprint to a tenth of its current size, and I might convince a thousand of my closest Facebook friends to do so also, but global warming would not cease as a result. A larger whole would have to be changed, rather than the sum of many individual parts changing, in order for that to happen.
Ethotechne is a matter of conscience: even insofar as it impacts
