The Pandemic, Empathy Fatigue, and Ethical Motivations: Kant on Conscience and Scotus on Love

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Abstract

The social effects of the pandemic have exacerbated the ability and desire to overcome empathy fatigue and, consequently, have engendered more indifference towards others and isolationism among the population.  These effects challenge society’s moral resolve to care for others.  In this paper I present two ethical explanations of the basis of morality and moral action—Immanuel Kant’s ethic of pure will (conscience) and John Duns Scotus’ ethic of an ontology of love, and endeavor to show that a morality based solely on our rationally justifiable conscience does not adequately compel us to overcome empathy fatigue, whereas a morality based on an acknowledgement and affirmation of the lovableness of others can propel us to overcome empathy fatigue.

Keywords: Pandemic, Empathy Fatigue, Love, Conscience, Scotus, Kant, Augustine, Enjoyment

Introduction

In September of 2020, Olga Khazan published an article in the Atlantic in which she argues, just six to seven months after the COVID-19 virus was declared a pandemic, our society was suffering from “empathy fatigue.”[1] This empathy fatigue is a person’s or collection of people’s hesitancy to care for others, especially strangers. It is the negative consequence of repeated exposure to stressful or traumatic events. Of course, empathy fatigue existed before the pandemic, for many people during war or who work around large amounts of suffering and grief immunize themselves with empathy fatigue just so they can continue their task and maybe even daily living. However, our nearly three-year struggle with the Covid virus has definitely exacerbated empathy fatigue.[2]

During the full and partial lockdowns, people would read of large numbers of others dying from the effects of the virus and begin what Martha Lincoln calls “necrosecurity” reasoning. She notes this “neologism . . . describes the cultural idea that mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order.”[3] That is, for many, to keep our resources plentiful enough for the largest number of people and to assure the most viable of our population thrive, we should not grieve as much the death of the old or those with co-morbidities than we should the young and productive. Like the old classroom dilemma of the dangerous runaway trolly in which we must throw off some individuals to save the greatest number of people, we have to make ethical trade-offs. Even though we may be glad we personally are not required by the social forces of the situation to make the concrete decisions of who gets needed healthcare and who does not, we know it is for the good of society to let some die to keep our resources and society secure.

This form of reasoning creates tremendous anxiety in our conscience. To become so callous about the death of people whom we cover with a statistic, we choose to diminish our empathy capacity and, consequently, become fatigued in trying to be sympathetic for those whom we do not know and whom we now think probably should be sacrificed for the greater good of society. Consequently, we become even more fatigued due to our empathy fatigue. For most people, there is something unsettling in our consciences about “necrosecurity” reasoning. Consequently, we keep our physical and emotional distance, and, according to the World Happiness Report of March 2021, this withdrawing definitely erodes the moral fabric holding society together. Authors Okabe and Lyubomirsky state, “One noteworthy and particularly relevant potential harm discussed by these researchers is the possible increase in social isolation and strife in intimate relationships, which can be exacerbated by the many sources of stress (social, financial, health, etc.) associated with the pandemic.”[4] Of course, not everyone has withdrawn from the sick and needy during this pandemic, but the social indicators of a society under great ethical and emotional stress (such as the growing number of emotionally and physically isolated people, the displays of fatigue and frustration among portions of society who face debilitating problems such as poverty and the harms resulting from the social breakdown of families, and the increasing fear of potential virus carriers) have increased. Consequently, many are more averse to taking risks to care for strangers, to sacrifice time and money to support others suffering from the virus and other maladies, or to be emotionally affected by the general plight of the present world. We are becoming more of a society of functional loners.[5]

How shall we respond to empathy fatigue? Do we have emotional and intellectual resources to bridge the space that exists among us? Will we as a society let empathy fatigue harden into a permanent emotional and maybe even a permanent ethical outlook towards others? I want to argue that we do have such resources, that a strong commitment to an ethical way of living can motivate us to resist empathy fatigue and to care for people—especially those whose well-being and sense of life’s purpose are under assault—and, thereby, hopefully, to overcome the isolation, fear, and empathy fatigue that exist among us.

Preview to Conclusion

Before I start the details of my argument for why we should be motivated to overcome empathy fatigue and to cultivate deep moral obligations towards others, I give a preview of where I plan to conclude. It is a fact of existence that each of us is an individual and a separated self from others. We alone experience our own thoughts and feelings. We are unique within the world. We can call this an epistemological gap—that is, although I know my thoughts and emotions directly, I cannot know yours directly. There are various ways to respond to this gap, but I want to examine two. First, there is the viewpoint that says since we cannot really know in any convincingly rational way other people’s selfhood, the world, and God, the best we can ethically do is always to act with a good, rationally defensible conscience. This is the position of the influential 18^th–19^th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Second, there is the viewpoint that says that if we properly understand the nature of existence and why the world exists, we will be motivated to love others. This is the position of the 12^th–13^th century Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus, who derives his ethics of love from the nature of the world and God as the world’s creator. Even though we can learn much from Kant about the importance of reason to our ethics, I hope to show that Scotus’ ontology of love is a better ethic for us to adopt in this time of the pandemic.

The Epistemological Condition

I think the Oxford philosopher and economist E. F. Schumacher offers for us a straightforward way to understand the epistemological gap.[6] All of us experience a fundamental division between ourselves and the world, between our inner experiences and the appearances of the world. We can sort out this division into four different categories: (1) there is the I; (2) there is how we appear to others; (3) there is the inner you; and (4) there is the outer world. We can elucidate further these four categories by asking four different kinds of questions. First, it is meaningful to us to ask, “what is really going on in my own inner world?” Second, we can ask, “what is going on in the inner world of other beings?” Third, we wonder “what do I look like in the eyes of other people?” And four, we ponder “what do I actually observe in the world around me?”

Schumacher concludes that we personally have direct access only to numbers one and four—that is, we know what we feel and think and that we observe the world. However, we have to accept that we do not have direct access to the inner world of others, and we cannot directly know what others know about ourselves. The epistemological gap means that although I can explore, clarify, and change the thoughts, emotions, and memories of my inner world, I cannot do the same directly to your inner world. Of course, we indirectly learn about other people’s inner worlds through language and common experiences, but, in a sense, the singular uniqueness of other people remains separate from us.

Kant versus Scotus

Many philosophers and theologians have tackled the issue of how ethics can deal with the epistemological gap (e.g., Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Jean Paul Sartre, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre), but I believe we can learn valuable lessons about how to overcome empathy fatigue in our culture from the different ethical theories of Kant and Scotus.

Kant

The following quote from one of Kant’s more accessible books, The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, is representative and exemplary of most of his thinking:

All rational knowledge is either material or formal; the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. Formal philosophy is called logic. Material philosophy, however, which has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is physics, that of the latter, ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively.[7]

Kant makes several claims in the quote that underlie most of his vast philosophical output. First, when he mentions “material philosophy,” he refers to things that we can actually know, and he divides that between nature and freedom. We can make knowledge claims about the world, but physics (in the sense of the theoretical knowledge of physical reality) is the only form of knowledge that produces objective, measurable, and predictable knowledge. Kant is famous for saying that “thoughts without content are empty and intuitions without concepts are blind.”[8] That is, our reasoning about the world must be based on actual empirical experiences, and since physics deals with physical reality, it alone can tell us about the basic laws of physical reality, and, hence, we must be skeptical about any metaphysical or theological explanations of being itself, the soul, and God. We have no empirical experiences of them.

However, physics cannot tell us anything about our inner experiences of freedom. Only ethics can describe what it means to be free, but ethics cannot tell us anything about the world known by physics. Thus, we live in two cognitive realms—a realm of natural science that explains the physical world we all live in, and a realm of ethics that attempts to explain what we ought to do as rational agents cognizant of our duty to follow the moral law.

Second, when he mentions “formal philosophy,” he refers to logical analyses, to conceptual clarifications, and to deductive reasoning. Just as physics must rely on mathematics and logic to explain the laws of nature, ethics must rely on logic to explain what it means freely to make dutiful, moral decisions. However, for Kant, if we are coerced, commanded, or influenced by biases or transitory experiences to act morally, then we are not acting freely. Only free choices are truly moral choices. We must know with rational certainty our moral duties, and only then can we truthfully know we are following a moral law.

Our duty requires us to act out of a pure will, not derived from external sources but solely from our own rational capacities to say that we must act a certain way indicative of a universally valid moral law. Kant calls this the categorical imperative, “Act as if the maxim [that is, the articulated principle] of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.”[9] That is, I can only be certain that I am acting morally if I autonomously and rationally decide with a pure conscience, not influenced by external pressures, that I wish what I would do would be universalizable, morally a duty without exceptions, and that I reach this conclusion strictly by my autonomous, rational decision. Kant, furthermore, derives from this categorical imperative of universalizability that I should always treat other people as persons who are also moral agents—as moral ends in themselves, not a mere means to another end. Thus, a pure conscience is the necessary and sufficient condition for dutiful, moral action.

Before I leave this brief explanation of Kant, I offer a summary:

• First, only natural science can explain the world, but only I can explain myself, thus the epistemological gap is real and prevents us from knowing another person’s inner world.
• Second, however, I can act as though I know what is universally right for all people (without actually knowing the inner world of those people) by acting with a pure, responsible, and rationally defensible conscience: that is, dutifully.
• Third, because of the categorical imperative, I must act morally towards others, respecting their own dignity as people with moral consciences.

Kant and Moral Action

My main contention is this—Kant’s ethic based upon the rational conscience cannot satisfactorily motivate us to rectify the empathy fatigue in our present moral malaise. However, I do not intend outright to dismiss Kant’s account. What Kant does (especially in emphasizing the importance of conscience or the pure will), he does well. For instance, Kant rightly emphasizes the role of autonomy in moral actions—that is, we must be the sole cause of our moral actions; we must conscientiously grasp and apply our moral duties, choosing them because they are universalizable. If something coerces our presumed moral acts—for example, if we are compelled by personal fears, societal prejudices, or an overwhelming authority outside our consciences—then our moral agency would not be the sole cause of our action.

Also, Kant correctly stresses the need to deliberate on our moral actions. For Kant, we must rationally evaluate our motives and test them, distinguishing hypothetical from categorical imperatives. Because an ethical theory needs to show how we can reason about morality, his explanation of how to apply the categorical imperative is appealing. Even though for Kant our moral duties are necessarily true and binding on our moral conscience in all cases without qualifications, we still must recognize them and select the corresponding correct actions, not relying on guesses or sentimental intuitions about our dutiful requirements. We must be serious, consistent, and conscientious in our morality, and Kant rightly highlights this aspect of moral action. Kant emphasizes all of this.

However, even though Kant acknowledges there is the “thing-in-itself,” the noumenal world, he maintains we are cognitively unable to understand and explain it rationally. Hence, he is a metaphysical skeptic, and this skepticism undermines the comprehensiveness of his ethical approach. Because all knowledge that can be rationally explained starts with our sense experiences, we conceptually know only the phenomena of experience and not the noumena (that is, the thing-itself) of the realities of the world—in particular others, being-itself, and God.[10] Since we cannot base ethics upon a knowledge of the world, others, or God, we should not attempt to base ethics on ontology. For Kant, the gap between the noumena and phenomena, between the realities of God, being itself, and the soul and our psychological-rational capacities to make our empirical experiences of the world intelligible is permanent and unbridgeable. Although our moral actions presume a goal, we cannot give a purely rational explanation of the goal of the moral life. The most we can do is give practical rational guidance. We can assume that if there is a real moral law, then we would need a pure will guided by the rational confines of the categorical imperative to act consistently with it, but we do not base nor derive our moral actions upon a knowledge of the moral law, God, or being itself. Thus, the question of the truth of our moral accounts is not raised, nor can it be raised. The truth of the metaphysical grounding of morality is impossible to determine rationally. Our primary concern is whether our actions are derived from our good conscience, from our sense of the universalizable duty.[11]

Moreover, Kant gives no room in our deliberations on our duties for desires and deeply felt preferences about what reality must be and why we should know it and live in harmony with it.[12] Because the duty is universally binding and can be known only through the criterion of the rationality of articulating a categorical imperative, we should resist either cultivating and nurturing preferences for moral ends or feeling the need to explain our moral actions according to what the proper desires and preferences of a morally defensible action would be. In fact, he is suspicious of desires, fearing they reflect too much our personal and social biases and epistemological limitations, and hence he dismisses their necessity in moral reasoning. For him, our moral deliberations must consciously set aside any emotional investment in the truth of our end, goals, and purposes.

Because of the absence of right beliefs and proper desires in Kant’s account, his ethic cannot provide us with an account or motive to overcome the “epistemological gap” and the influence of “empathy fatigue.” In his explanation, we know ourselves but cannot know the selves of others, cannot know their own moral requirements or responsibilities. It is true that Kant sought to create an ethic that would lead to the enlightenment of 19^th century Europe and, hopefully, to end wars and to establish peace and justice in society. But his ethic tends towards an individualistic account of autonomy and moral duty. Our moral consciences are based on our autonomous convictions, not on a knowable and explainable reality we share with others. Of course, the categorical imperative demands that we treat the humanity of people as moral ends in themselves, never as mere means, but the categorical imperative does not compel or propel us to form moral relationships with others. It primarily demands that if we have the occasion to respond to the humanity of others, we must do so with a pure conscience. There is no emphasis on the rational or emotional necessity to seek out others, to form relationships, or to engage the life-situations of others.

During this time of the pandemic in which we suffer the socially harmful consequences of becoming more isolated from others and callous to the suffering of strangers, Kant’s ethic cannot convincingly motivate us to find more personal and moral ways to engage people and to care and be compassionate about our neighbors. We need more to overcome the effects of the pandemic than personal conscience and rational postulates. Of course, formulating a strong, rational conscience is laudable as a display of thoughtfulness and sincerity, but to cultivate a motivation to try to bridge the “epistemological gap” and overcome “empathy fatigue,” we need, first, a metaphysical account of the ontological dimension of morality and, second, a more compelling conviction to connect morally with others.

Scotus

Scotus is a complex thinker (in fact, his nickname is the “Subtle Doctor”). The following quote is representative and exemplary of Scotus’ ethical writings.

Therefore, God, infusing the love by which all beings tend towards him in a perfect and appropriate way, gives this disposition by which he is held dear as a good that is to be loved by others as well. Thus this disposition which regards God in himself, makes a person inclined to will that he is had and loved by someone else, at least by anyone whose friendship he is pleased to have, or whose friendship is not displeasing to him for that time when it is pleasing to him. Just as the disposition, then, inclines to a perfect and appropriate love of God, so does it also incline one to want him to be loved by oneself and by anyone whose friendship is pleasing to him.[13]

Scotus makes several claims in this quote that underlie his philosophy and theology. First, when he says that God “gives this disposition,” Scotus refers to a fundamental feature of creation itself. Creation reflects a design ordered by the love of God. God is infinite (the description of God Scotus uses the most) and thus lacks nothing (otherwise God would be finite). Consequently, because God is infinite, all of God’s characteristics are also infinite, lacking nothing as a characteristic of God. That is, God is infinite in being, goodness, and wisdom. Furthermore, since creatures are finite—that is, it is possible for them not to exist and also to cease from existing—they owe their existence to God, who wills the world to exist. Because God is infinitely good and cannot do evil, whatever God does is thus good. God makes the world to be good, not in the sense that God long ago was the first cause of all things, but in the sense that God is the continual power of existence of all finite creaturely things. God’s creative power is not like a chain of causes in which the last effect is remote from the first cause. Rather, God’s power is like the movement involved in swinging an axe—the shoulders move the arms, which move the axe, which hits the tree.[14] All are moving simultaneously but the shoulder gives movement to all the other parts. So does God. God’s infinite reality causes the existence of every finite reality by affirming that their existence is better to be than not to be. Hence, because God is the essential cause of all of creation (and not an accidental cause as in a chain of causes), all things created by God are good according to their existence.

For Scotus, creatures’ goodness resides in the basic fact that they exist.[15] Our existence per se is good, and it is better to exist than not to exist. All creatures are therefore disposed to their goodness, to the sheer fact their existence fulfills the goodness of God’s creative actions. Because finite things cannot bring into existence their own beings, the fact that the world and people exist indicate that God created their existence. Hence, the existence of others shows it is better and is a good that they exist than if they had never existed at all.

The second important claim Scotus makes is when he says, “so does it also incline one to want him to be loved by oneself and by anyone whose friendship is pleasing to him.” Each creature is inclined towards love. Since it is reasonable to love the greatest and infinite goodness, we should love God and should acknowledge and praise the being of God. Also, because God creates the goodness of creatures, of people, we should also love the goodness of others—that is, the goodness of their existence. We perform this love by affirming and promoting the value of their existence, enabling them to experience their goodness. Furthermore, by affirming their existence, we share in God’s love for them, enabling them to experience fulfillment as persons in the love of God and in experiencing their goodness within creation.

The major arresting feature of Scotus’ ethic is that he connects ethics to ontology, connects what we must do towards creation and other persons with the basic existence of the world and others.[16] His ethic shows the interdependencies of existence, goodness, and love, and offers a compelling reason for seeking out and promoting the value and worth of other people. It is an ontology of love reflective of the namesake of his religious order, Saint Francis of Assisi, who, in his famous Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, extols the good existence of all aspects of creation as witnesses of the goodness and love of God.

Scotus provides a metaphysical account to explain this Franciscan love of all creatures based on his understanding of God as an infinite being.[17] God is the only being who is not without what it takes to be an existing reality.[18] We cannot imagine God containing a lack of what is required for something to exist, which means that God is the perfect being without deficiencies and limitations. Because God is the perfect being, God ought to exist rather than not exist, and hence it follows that God is perfectly good. As the perfectly good being, God’s being infinitely preserves itself, because it is more perfect to persevere in existence than not to exist. As the infinitely perfect, good being, God moreover desires and wills goodness, and this divine will creates objects to love by affirming that it is better that these objects exist than not to exist. So, whatever exists, exists because God seeks to preserver its existence. The goodness of each creature is its existence and its perseverance in existence. When we realize that our existence is better to be than not to be, we naturally seek to sustain our existence. In loving our existence in this way, we also realize that our existence comes from God and thus we should love God for creating us. Love in this sense means gratitude for existence, for the fact that it is better for us to exist than not. Finally, in knowing that love is the proper response to our existence, we also acknowledge that other people exist for the same reason that we exist, and as manifestations of the love and goodness of God we should love their existence as well. This is his ontology of love, describing a grand vision of the valuable existence of all creatures and provoking an active affirmation and gratitude for the existence of God and our neighbors. Therefore, just as it is fitting to love God for our existence, we should love our neighbor for their existence as objects of God’s love.[19]

Before I leave this brief explanation of Scotus, I offer a summary:

• First, because God is infinite, all of God’s characteristics are also infinite—that is, God is infinitely powerful and infinitely good and loving.
• Second, all of God’s actions reflect the infinite characteristics of God—that is, God loves infinitely whatever God does powerfully.
• Third, God creates the world by God’s infinite power, goodness, and love, and whatever exists is loved infinitely by God.
• Fourth, the proper way to respond to creation is with love for it as a product of the infinite God.

Scotus and Moral Action

I believe Scotus’ account can give us the insight and conviction to address our concerns about the present worry of empathy fatigue in our society, and that is primarily because he offers an ontology of love, a way to derive ethics from an account of the nature of existence.

Recalling what was explained above, the “epistemological gap” exists because for us properly to understand our place in the world, we naturally ask two questions—“what is going on in the inner world of other persons,” and “what do I look like in the eyes of other persons?” It is an ontological fact that we can never be other people; we are our own selves, and they are theirs. Thus, it would be logically and conceptually futile to attempt to bridge the gap by seeking an ontological monism in which all people are actually one “Self” embodied in different bodies. However, I ask, is it possible to identify and create a familiar and reciprocal relationship between ourselves and others, so that we could share a knowledge and experience that enable us to see how others experience the world and us in it? Scotus’ ontology of love attempts not only to explain such a possibility but also to compel people to act in ways indicative of a familiar and personal ontological connection.

Scotus bases his ethic on the metaphysical claim that God creates the world out of love for the world, out of the creative power to affirm into existence the world.[20] This affirmation means that it is better for creation to exist than not to exist, and that each creature receives its existence from the loving affirmation of God. We as creatures, therefore, rightly understand ourselves by realizing we are the creative work and objects of God’s love, and we accurately understand and affirm our own existence by loving God, by affirming the unique reality of God as the loving creator of the world.

Furthermore, in loving God, we also recognize that God loves the unique existence of all creatures, and consequently in loving God, we naturally love others as loved by God, as creatures whom we should love, acknowledge, and affirm the value of their existence. In loving others, we identify with their place in the world, not in the sense that we become them, but we become part of their necessary nexus of divine and creaturely love. Love as the affirmation of the essential uniqueness of what it loves thus creates a reality in which all things support and fortify the value of creation.

Both Kant and Scotus make intellectually attractive cases for morality in that they articulate a goal for the moral life and the ways we can reach the goal. However, in light of my above argument, Scotus’ ontology of love better explains how we can ontologically connect with others and, consequently, how to overcome “empathy fatigue.”

Building the Habit of Love

Because, according to Scotus’ ethic, it is natural and rewarding to our existence as contingent creatures dependent upon the necessary existence of God to love others, to approach all of creation as recipients of God’s love, and to value the essential realities of others, we are compelled by our very being to resist and overcome the “empathy fatigue” of the present age. Even though the pandemic has forced many to retreat from others and perhaps has caused society as a whole to become more psychologically callous towards the suffering of others, in Scotus’ ontology of love it has not changed our role within God’s creation. It has not erased the value of people’s existence and has not removed the ontological imperative to love God and our neighbor.

To strengthen our resolve to believe and apply the ontology of love, we need to articulate and adhere to reasons that compel society’s members to resist what morally and sociologically divides people, whether it is partisan political ideologies, class, race, religious doctrines, or geographical regions. Rather than advancing or tolerating divisive ideologies, we should promote and participate in the kinds of relationships and groups dependent upon love for their identity and survival. Of course, not all relationships and organizations depend on people loving each other (for instance, business is based on production, government agencies upon governing the people, sports upon playing games, etc.). However, relationships and organizations such as families, places of divine worship, and intimate neighborhoods require and rely upon love.

To help identify the relationships and organizations that are based on love, I appeal to a point made by St. Augustine of Hippo. In various places he distinguishes between what we should “use” (uti) versus what we should “enjoy” (frui). He says in The Trinity, “We enjoy things we know when the will reposes in them because it is delighted by them for their own sakes; we use things when we refer them to something else we would like to enjoy.”[21] The word frui for Augustine means more than a simple pleasure. Our English words fruitful and to fructify have the same root as does frui. That is, proper enjoyment produces a profound satisfaction to our desire for fulfillment. It indicates the appropriate response to relating to objects that have inherent value. We should in fact experience fulfillment when we appropriate into our self-understanding relationships based on limitless respect and devotion.

However, not all relationships produce fulfillment. Some relationships and groups are strictly utilitarian and serve relative and transitory goals, such as businesses and political parties. We deem people’s value in these cases as to whether they serve these goals. However, in such relationships and groups people are not primarily considered as moral ends in themselves but as means toward other ends. The more society’s economy, government, rule of law, etc. require these kinds of “useful” relationships, the more these transactional types of organizations define our social experiences and self-evaluations and the less committed and less cognizant we are of the essential identity of our neighbors and strangers.

It is thus important to know what to enjoy and what to use and not confuse them, a problem St. Augustine addresses in Teaching Christianity:

So if we wish to enjoy things that are meant to be used, we are impeding our own progress, and sometimes are also deflected from our course, because we are thereby delayed in obtaining what we should be enjoying, or turned back from it altogether, blocked by our love for inferior things. Enjoyment, after all, consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake, while use consists in referring what has come your way to what your love aims at obtaining, provided, that is, it deserves to be loved.[22]

The point is that since the inherent quality of all relationships and activities is not the same, that some relationships we are meant to affirm and promote because of their special nature, we must properly order the loves in our lives. What makes the relationships and activities special ones and, consequently, objects of our enjoyment are the intimation of eternity in them. Of course, Augustine never contends we should treat temporal objects as though they were eternal, as though they were God, but he does recognize that some relationships convey the impression of eternity in their fittingness for perseverance and future orientation. That is, their unique constitution and construction aim for permanence and continuation, and by engaging in them we better understand and appropriate into our own self-identity the significance of eternity.[23] By them, we better grasp the fulfillment of our temporal existence and dependence upon God and, thus, as Hannah Arendt says of the concept, we “‘enjoy’ (frui) future eternity.”[24]

We are most fulfilled as beings designed to love when we enjoy the relationships that brings the greatest delight to our lives. Because love is a craving for more fulfillment, we are most fulfilled by enjoying what always has a future, what cannot cease to gratify our need and desire for more love. However, we misuse these relationships and consequently ourselves if we use what we should enjoy, if we treat them as though they were commodities with relative value to the particular social need and situation and, hence, dispensable when we no longer can use them. If we treat what ought to be enjoyed as though it were a commodity, we distort its nature by changing it from an intimation of eternity into an object with an expiration date, as though we can use up its value.

Yet, we have relationships and groups that require more of us than acknowledging and using their utility. They require love—the recognition of others’ inherent worth as human beings and that we should enjoy them for their own sake—acknowledging that it is better that they are alive and in relationship with us than not.[25] For instance, in a family, even though parents and children serve roles and actions relative to their generations and responsibilities, these functions are the proper practices for parents and children to be recognized and appreciated as moral ends in themselves, as possessors of inherent value, and as worthy objects of love. Families lose their unique contribution to people’s wellbeing when they are no longer relationships of love, no longer based on the commitment and action to acknowledge and foster the unique existence of all members.

By committing ourselves to relationships and groups based and dependent on enjoying others for their existence in our lives, we not only convince ourselves that we are relating to them as they should be related to as human beings, but that we persuade ourselves to seek ways to acknowledge the essential value as human beings of others, even strangers. By learning how to love in families, we are better able to love others. By encouraging and fortifying the love endemic to family structures, close neighborhood associations, and communities of faith toward God, we equip ourselves to be more loving, even to strangers, to the large number of people in our society who suffer the suffocating effects of the pandemic.

The “Ontology of Love” and Clinical Ethics

To love someone is to enjoy them. We should not try to enjoy what should be only used about other persons. For instance, just because we rightly use the talents of another person does not mean we enjoy them, but we enjoy them when we affirm their unique existences. To enjoy someone is like “loving them as we love ourselves.” That is, in realizing in what way we love ourselves we can learn how to enjoy others. Of course, we do not love everything about our lives—that is, for example, our transient-practical skills (the skills of work and play) or our moral mistakes. But we do love that we exist, that we are the unique selves we are in the world. We praise the fact that we exist rather than never have existed. To love others means we enjoy the fact that they are the unique existing persons they are, that the reality and value of their existence as humans is the same as our existence. When we enjoy others, we thus make an ontological statement about the goodness of human existence.

In clinical ethics we do not deal just with injuries, illness, and failing bodies. We deal with persons who suffer injuries, illnesses, and failing bodies. The way we treat the injuries etc. are situational and varies with the needs of the context, but the way we estimate the goodness of patients is always the same—that is, it is good that they exist. We should enjoy them, recognize that we share an ontological fact with them: that is, it is better to exist than not exist as the unique selves we are in the world. Hence, the good of healthcare is what Edmund Pellegrino calls the acknowledgement and promotion of the goodness of the patients as persons.[26]

In clinical settings this disposition towards patients does not necessitate that we are either sentimental or intimate with patients.[27] Because to enjoy others means we praise the shared human existence we have with others, we logically need not think it is always synonymous with specific behavior. Rather, it is a matter of being committed to acknowledge and promote the goodness of the patients’ existence, to treat people not as organic machines that follow mechanistic laws but as individuals who understand themselves as a continuous self with a history shaped by their unique personalities and events. Thus, the common moral trait exhibited in clinical ethics is to enjoy the patients, to “love them as we love ourselves,” to treat them in ways that reflect that it is good they exist rather than not exist.

This commitment can be displayed in special ways: for instance, calling patients by their names, looking them in their eyes, listening to their concerns and worries, recognizing their life-situation (for example, as member of a family), cultivating a hospitable social and physical environment, acknowledging that their pain is inseparable from their selfhood, and respecting their spiritual desire for divine presence and healing.

Conclusion

Therefore, for us to react successfully with our ethical commitments to the epistemological gap and to the disastrous effects of the growing empathy fatigue in our society, we should commit ourselves to our loving relationships, and through them to cultivate habits of love that equip us to approach strangers as neighbors who also participate in a world formed by the love of God. By acknowledging that the basis of creation is the love of God affirming into existence the world and that we share with others the same value of existence, we can possibly cultivate a desire to love others, to recognize and promote the value of their existence, and to celebrate our common humanity as creatures who are recipients of divine love.

References

[1] Olga Khazan, “A Failure of Empathy Led to 200,000 Deaths. It Has Deep Roots,” The Atlantic, September 22, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/covid-death-toll-us-empathy-elderly/616379/.

[2] Perhaps the World Happiness Report 2021 is the most thorough statistical analysis of the physical, social, and psychological impact of the Covid-virus. John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, eds. World Happiness Report 2021 (New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2021), https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/.

[3] Martha Lincoln, “Necrosecurity, Immunosupremacy, and Survivorship in the Political Imagination of COVID-19,” Open Anthropological Research 1, no. 1 (2021): 49, https://doi.org/10.1515/opan-2020-0104.

[4] Karynna Okabe and Sonja Lyubomirsky, “Social Connection and Well-Being during Covid-19,” in World Happiness Report 2021, ed. Helliwell, Layard, Sachs, and De Neve, https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/social-connection-and-well-being-during-covid-19/.

[5] Peggy Noonan wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about how the pandemic has exacerbated anti-social behaviors, in particular a fear and aversion to forming intimate and lasting relationships that fosters functional loners and engenders a social and moral passivity. She quotes Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute detailing some of the socially deleterious consequences of the pandemic.

We are seeing “a rising generation acutely averse to risk, and so to every form of dynamism,” and this trend isn’t confined to the young. “Excessive risk aversion” is deforming other areas of American life, from child rearing to work and public leadership. And it seems intertwined with a more general tendency toward inhibition and constriction—we see this in speech and conduct codes, which leave Americans “walking on eggshells around each other in many of our major institutions.” This new ethos “stifles the public arena while denying us recourse to private arenas and tells us how not to behave without showing us how to thrive.” (Peggy Noonan, “Social Distancing Was a Problem before Covid,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-distancing-was-a-problem-before-covid-family-marriage-pandemic-religion-11637795685).

[6] E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper, 1977), 62–63.

[7] Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Thomas K. Abbott (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), 3.

[8] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004), 22. This quote represents the profound tension that runs throughout Kant’s philosophy, even his ethics, between the accomplishments and severe limitations of what we can know. Norman Melchert’s summary of Kant’s explanation of the work of this tension is illuminating: “As you can see, the quest for reasons will not be satisfied until it finds some condition that doesn’t need to be explained by a further condition.” Norman Melchert, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, 6^th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 445. He further notes, “We have seen that in no case can we have knowledge of the things-in-themselves these Ideas [the soul, world, and God] point to. Taken as sources of knowledge, the Ideas are illusory” (452).

[9] Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, 38.

[10] Kant calls this approach a “Copernican Revolution” in which instead of the mind conforming to the ontological features of the world, our experience of the world conforms to our cognitive a priori categories. Although the Copernican Revolution permeates Kant’s philosophy, perhaps the clearest place to find his explanation of it is in the Critique of Pure Reason, “Transcendental Logic: Analytic of Conceptions”; see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 30–68.

[11] Because Kant refuses to specify any metaphysical content to morality, his categorical imperative actually becomes malleable to hidden influences. Alasdair MacIntyre makes this criticism: “Because the Kantian notion of duty is so formal that it can be given almost any content, it becomes available to provide a sanction and a motive for the specific duties which any particular social and moral tradition may propose.” Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (New York: Touchstone, 1966), 198.

[12] When scholars talk about the role of emotions in Kant’s philosophy, they mainly look at the psychological assumptions involved in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Patricia Kitcher is representative of this; Patricia Kitcher, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Recently, Maria Borges has offered an account of emotions in Kant’s moral philosophy: Maria Borges, Emotion, Reason, and Action in Kant (New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019).

[13] John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio III 28, 8; in Duns Scotus on Divine Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans, ed. A. Vos et al. (Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003), 45.

[14] It is debatable whether Scotus argues that God can do anything (even contradict God’s self) or that God must work within ontological boundaries. Because Scotus’ arguments are often very intricate and subtle, we can find quotes that would suggest God’s will is arbitrary. However, according to Allan Wolter, the dominate concept guiding Scotus’ overall thoughts about God’s relationship to creation is ordinatissime volens (“a most methodical lover”).

Hence, [God] first loves himself ordinately and consequently not inordinately in an envious or jealous manner. Secondly, he wills to have co-lovers, and this is nothing else than willing that others have his love in themselves . . . . Thirdly, however, he wills those things which are necessary to attain his end, namely, the gift of grace. God is always ‘ordinatissime volens’—a most methodical lover. Grace builds on nature, after all, and the supernatural on the natural.” (Allan Wolter, Duns Scotus: On the Will and Morality (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 20.

[15] For a good account of the metaphysical basis of Scotus’ ethics see Caleb J. Clanton, “Aquinas and Scotus on the Metaphysical Foundations of Morality,” Religions 10, no. 2 (2019): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10020107.

[16] Perhaps the most informative book on Scotus’ efforts to connect God’s being, creation, and divine love is Vos et al., Duns Scotus on Divine Love. For instance, they say, “As God is the source of all good, I must love him above anything else. When I love him in this way I have a ‘right act’ or ‘an act of righteousness (‘actus iustitae’)—that is, an act which does justice to the most fundamental nature of things. . . . If, however, loving God is good in itself, I cannot love him and not wish that he be loved by all other human beings. . . . So if I want others being to have that love (‘caritas’), I love them, I want their good.” (Vos et al., Duns Scotus on Divine Love, 68).

[17] Scotus’ argument for God’s existence and God’s creation of the world is complicated and found in various places. The following is a summary from the following sources: Lectura 1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 38–135; Ordinatio 1, d. 2, q. 1, nn. 39–190; Reportatio 1, d. 2, q. 1; and De primo principio. (1) Causal relationships exist; (2) effects cannot cause themselves; (3) there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, because if there were, there would only be an infinite number of dependencies and not a source for the object that are dependent by their nature; (4) hence, there must be a first cause; (5) since a first cause is a causal agency, then a non-dependent being causes creation; (6) this being’s existence cannot be limited or conditioned by another being, because if it were, it would be conditioned by something else; hence there must be something unlimited or infinite; (7) as an infinite being, God is infinite in all ways—goodness, power, wisdom, etc.; (8) God causes the world as an infinite being; (9) since all dependent, finite beings are dependent upon something for their existence, then what is non-dependent and infinite must cause their existence; (10) this cause is not an accidental chain of causes, like falling dominoes; (11) rather, this cause is an essential causality—that is, God causes the existence of everything, like the moving shoulders move the arms which move the hands which moves the axe; (12) the essential causality occurs by causing the existence of everything—that is, the existence of finite beings is a finite form of the infinite existence of God; (13) since God’s existence is infinitely good, creature’s existence is finitely good; (14) creatures exists because God wills goodness to exist finitely; (15) creation is thus not arbitrary—as the first cause, God by nature is a causing agent, and because God is infinitely good without any imperfections, God causes the existence of creatures by causing the existence of finite beings as finite good beings; (16) to cause something to be good implies to love its goodness; (17) since God is infinitely loving in the same way as God is infinitely good and in causing creatures to exist by infinite power and infinite goodness, God causes creatures to exist by God’s infinite love; (18) God wills creatures to exist because it is better (that is, a manifestation of goodness) that they exist than that they do not exist; (19) therefore, since it is better that they exist than not exist and God causes them to exist, and since God loves the goodness of existence, God loves into existence all creatures.

[18] For an accurate and logical summary of Scotus’ argument for God’s existence, see Thomas Williams, “John Duns Scotus,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/duns-scotus/.

[19] For an account of how Scotus explains the connection between God’s commandments and the ontological goodness of creation, see Oleg Bychkov, “In Harmony with Reason: John Duns Scotus’ Theo-aesth/ethics,” Open Theology 1, no. 1 (2014), 45–55, https://doi.org/10.2478/opth-2014-0005.

[20] This statement highlights a central issue in Scotus’ philosophy—the relationship between the necessary being of God and the contingent reality of all creatures. Because humans are contingent, they have free will—that is, they must both affirm and reject the possibilities before them. However, this freedom is not divorced from God. Creatures are ontologically contingent and thus dependent on the creative force of God for their preservation of existence. Because creatures are dependent upon God for their existence, it is consistent with their ontological reality for humans to love and be grateful to God for this preservation. Instead of our contingency suggesting a tenuous and fragile place within the universe, in Scotus’ view our contingency indicates an ontological connection with the necessity of God’s existence. For a thorough explanation of the importance of contingency in Scotus’ philosophy, see Michael Sylwanowicz, Contingent Causality and the Foundations of Duns Scotus’ Metaphysics (New York: Brill, 1996), especially chapter seven: “The Human and Divine Will: Freedom, Contingent Causality and Determinism.”

[21] St. Augustine, The Trinity, introduction, translation, and notes by Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), 296.

[22] St. Augustine, Teaching Christianity: De Doctrina Christiana, introduction, translation, and notes by Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996), 107. Augustinian scholars debate whether Augustine argues (as he appears to do in Contra Faustum Manicheum, 22, 78) that we should love our neighbors only as a way to love God or should we love our neighbors as a good in themselves, not merely as a means to loving God. After a fairly thorough examination of the relevant passages in Augustine’s works, Robert Dodaro concludes (as do I) that the upshot of Augustine’s thinking is

Thus, we enjoy the goodness in the other as we enjoy it in ourselves. For Augustine it frequently happens that our perception of the other’s goodness awakens in us the enjoyment of our own. . . . We enjoy the neighbor to the extent we honor his good. (Robert Dodaro, “Augustine on Enjoying One’s Neighbor: Uti-Frui Once Again,” Lateranum 80, no. 3 (1976): 525).

By loving the goodness in the neighbor, we love their existence and how that existence reflects the creative, loving power of God. Or, in another way to say it, we love the image of God in the neighbor.

[23] Augustine connects the love of God with the love neighbor, and thereby we should enjoy our neighbor in a finite way as an intimation of eternity. “But this [when the emphasis seems to be only on the love of the neighbor] is because if a [person] loves his neighbor, it follows that above all he loves love itself. But God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God (I Jn 4:16). So it follows that above all he loves God.” (Augustine, The Trinity, 252).

[24] Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, edited and with an interpretative essay by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 28. Arendt gives a probing analysis of Augustine’s teachings on love. In terms of the concept of “enjoy,” she connects it to Augustine’s teachings on love as a craving that seeks permanence (Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine, 31–35). Because we fear and dread death, we crave what continually has a future, and we find moments of eternity in the relationships built upon the revelation and image of God. Hence, the intimations of eternity is the special quality that belongs in the objects that should be enjoyed.

[25] Sharon M. Kaye and Paul Thomson explain how for Augustine enjoying someone is an act of love/charity,

There is the charity called “enjoyment.” This is the good, well-ordered love that one has for things that are valuable in and of themselves. Augustine likes to use the metaphor of home to capture the feeling of enjoyment. Home is the place that you want to go for its own sake. You go to the bank or to the market for the sake of doing or getting something; you go home, in contrast, just to be. You can rest there. You experience a sense of comfort and peace. Your love for your home is the love for enjoyment. (Sharon M. Kaye and Paul Thomson, On Augustine (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 66).

[26] “Medical good and the patient’s perception of the good life must be related to the good for humans as humans. . . . At this level, we are concerned with the good peculiar to humans, . . . The patient is a fellow human with the physician to whom he is bound by solidarity and mutual respect.” Edmund Pellegrino, “The ‘Telos’ of Medicine and the Good of the Patient,” in Clinical Bioethics: A Search for the Foundations, ed. Carrado Viafora (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005), 26.

[27] Christy A. Rentmeester makes a good case that healthcare workers must protect themselves from becoming too emotionally exhausted as a result of becoming overly sentimental or intimate with patients. They have a professional responsibility to sustain their responsibility to treat patients. This requires providers to become inured, not callous, to their patients. Callousness is indifference and hinders the provider’s ability to discern rightly the patient’s situation. “Inurement is the cultivation of strength, of endurance of emotionally distressing conditions, and it is a process of learning how to preserve a mindset of caring and learning how to maintain capacious perception, despite such conditions.” Christy A. Rentmeester, “Should a Good Healthcare Professional Be (at Least a Little) Callous?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 32, no. 1 (2007): 47, https://doi.org/10.1080/03605310601152982.

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