Demonstrategy. H. L. Hix
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 others, it remains something that I do individually and am responsible for individually. Whether it does or does not affect other people, whether or not other people are aware of it, I am responsible. Even in a circumstance where no one else knows that I set the forest fire, I still am accountable for setting it. Ethopoesis is more like what Socrates resigns himself to in the Crito, a life formation inseparable from the larger human community, so that it is not a matter of individual conscience alone. Even though Socrates was condemned for something he didn’t do, the condemnation applies. He ought to accept the penalty imposed on him, because it is a part of, or is an effluence of, the whole in which his life has been and is enmeshed. The larger-than-himself, the entirety, is definitive, rather than he himself, the part. Socrates has an individual conscience, but it is not what governs in this matter.
In ethotechnical matters I am called on to obey. The rule not to leave campfires unattended describes something I should simply do. I am duty-bound to obey that principle. I am essentially passive in relation to it, and my obedience occurs, for all practical purposes, in isolation from anything else. The attribute required of me by the ethopoetic is something larger, that, not exhausted by obedience to a rule and not defined by its relation to a nation-state, includes my own judgment in relation to natural constraints, the judgments of others, and so on. I am in active, reciprocal, responsible relationship with global warming, a relationship inextricably linked to other aspects of my thought and life.
Louis Mackey’s distinction between a problem and a mystery applies here. A problem, he says, “can be solved. The terms in which it is stated define what will count as a solution. Confronted on a math test with a problem that cannot be solved, the student has every right to complain that it ‘isn’t really a problem.’” A mystery resembles a problem in being “an indeterminate situation that begs to be made determinate,” but, unlike a problem, “its indeterminacy is such that the description of the mystery does not specify conditions of resolution and closure.” A mystery “cannot be fully described. Faced with a mystery, you can never be sure what will count as a solution, or even that there is one.” The ethotechnical offers itself to us in the form of a problem, the ethopoetic in the form of a mystery. As a result, in the ethotechnical there is a solution available, at least potentially or in principle, but the ethopoetic, because it is a mystery, is not offered in terms of problem and solution. Confronted with a problem, I can discover (or in principle I can discover, or I seek to discover) a solution. How do I keep from causing forest fires?, I ask myself. Oh, I see: I’ll thoroughly douse my campfire before I leave my campsite, and carefully stub out each of my cigarette butts. I need only act in a manner adequate to an occasion. Confronted with a mystery, though, I cannot simply find the right switch to flip. No occasion offers itself; I and my conditions must be remade. When I ask how I can keep from causing global warming, I must imagine an alternative self and alternative conditions.
In relation to forest fires I ought to exercise my capacity for what the Greeks called techne, but in relation to global warming techne is inadequate, and I ought to draw on my capacity for what they called poesis. The