The basic contention of these volumes is that morality, and hence ethics, is bi-polar: objective and subjective. Just as a magnet is defined by two poles which at the same time are distinct and complementary, in ethics the subjective and objective dimensions differ in their dynamic but are indispensable one or the other. One cannot exist without the other, for they are defined by their mutual relationship. In the search for clarity and consistency, the greatest intellectual temptation for the ethicist is to oversimplify, that is, to so emphasize either the objective or the subjective as radically to marginalize or even to eliminate the other. The real challenge is to recognize and integrate both.

Ethics would be much simpler if it could be reduced to either: a) matter-in-evaluation (or Spirit-in-dialectic) progressing inexorably to some such destiny as total empirical or pragmatic control, the classless society, or the ultimate Synthesis; or, b) the aloof individual facing anguished existential decisions with the sole concern of being "authentic".

However, ethics begins to engage reality--and, in turn, gains its own reality--only when it takes into account not either nature or freedom, but both. Only then can it engage the ambiguities and frustrations of life as human, which consist precisely in the relation between the two. As in a marriage, not only must the identity and relative autonomy of the two partners be respected and safeguarded, but their mutuality and inter-dependence must be insured and fostered. These volumes, are entitled Ethics at the Crossroads because they concern, not a monistic ethics, but the complex search to integrate both dimensions.

For some, that option threatens the security they have found in more simplistic models. Nevertheless, rational justification can be found for the objective-subjective vision of ethics. This Introduction to Volume I, Normative Ethics and Objectivity, will suggest some of the reasons for positing an objective dimension to ethics. Volume II, entitled: Personalist Ethics and Human Subjectivity, will explore the dimension of subjectivity. Volume III, entitled Ethics and Culture will search to bring together these two directions in a higher synthesis in terms of culture. The introduction of each volume will provide a brief overview and rationale of the structure of its chapters.

Most basically, the call for objectivity is based on the fact that human action must reflect the reality of the human condition. In other words, human reason must understand, and human freedom must accept, reality--including human reality--as it is. The facts of our environment, the nature of the human person, and their weight relative to human freedom may be debated, but not the need to take them into account. Inasmuch as the reality in question is, or has reference to what is human, it takes on a moral character. There are three basic dimensions to this.

1. The human as being-in-the-world. One basic reason why morality must have an objective dimension is that the human person is part of a cosmos or world which is given. As material, the human is subject to the basic forces and laws of nature; he or she exists within space and time. Though one may manipulate these, one cannot successfully disregard them. If anything, this view has been reinforced by the modern ecological movement which insists on obligations regarding the environment and the duty to respect the eco-system. Even the religiously inspired view which saw man as "master" of the world, now insists much more on man as "steward". Other ways of expressing the same basic idea are: the human person as "incarnate" (the Geist im Welt of Rahner), or as contextualized (the human organism reacting to its environment). However this be expressed, the consequence is the same: reason must take account of one's situation in the world in order to discover a moral path. This intra-world reality of the human does not deny or exclude the spirituality of human kind or its transcendent destiny (see the appendix by G. Stanley in Volume II). The present volume insists that to be integrally human, the reality and impact of one's physical world must be taken into account.

2. Human consciousness as objective. Another way of reaching the same conclusion is through the relatively more "subjective" path of an analysis of human consciousness. The experience of human consciousness is initially and predominantly consciousness-of-objects, with an implicit consciousness-of-self. In other words, at least initially, our awareness is directed more outwardly than inwardly. It takes several years for truly reflexive knowledge (being aware of one's awareness: knowing that one knows) to mature. Our language manifests this when we say often "I know (or perceive) this or that", but only rarely "I know myself". It is characteristic of this consciousness-of-objects that one is aware of them as given. The objects of the consciousness include what we call cosmos or world. Gradually one grows aware of self-as-body with material characteristics, especially the fact of its being given. Finally, consciousness of one's emotions (feeling states) reveals that most often feelings are connected with transactions with the world: pleasure and pain often are derived from contact with objects which then become objects-of-desire and which are seen as good or bad inasmuch as they attract or repel. Our moral concepts of good or bad find their roots in these experiences.

3. The human as necessarily social and cultural. A critical dimension of the world in which the human finds him- or herself contextualized is that of other humans, i.e., society. One is brought into being by others--one's parents--whom one does not choose. Not only is one inexorably subjected to space and time, one has no say over whom one's parents are to be or the society into which one is brought. For years one literally is at the mercy of others, both for physical survival and growth and for one's cultural development. At least initially, one's biology or genetic constitution, as well as one's physical and cultural conditioning, are given--one has no choice in the matter.

One's very human subjectivity--the subject of volume II--to the extent that it is formed and developed by language, is influenced largely by others. Much of our identity--our language, beliefs, character, tastes, and physical and mental health--is an effect of others. Even where we enjoy some autonomy, the opinions and influence of our community and cultural traditions weigh heavily on our moral decisions. "No man is an island": not only are we physically incarnate in a material world, but humanly we are contextualized in a world of other people, present and past. Both these dimensions--material and social--are objective, i.e., realities which in most respects are less the effect of freedom of choice on the part of the individual concerned than the contrary. Extensively, in the exercise of one's freedom, they constitute that to which, and according to which, one must respond.

Since then individuals find themselves necessarily in the world and in society, and are explicitly more conscious of objects than of themselves, what is the meaning of this for morality and ethics? In the final analysis--everything. Even the most subjective of ethical theories will insist that individuals must be true to themselves. Certainly, that means being true to the total reality of one's existence, including the elements which are pre-determined and pre-determining. In this case the moral stance will be one of acceptance of our placement in nature and society and of the impetus and specification which this gives to the understanding and implementation of human freedom. The objective or realist perspective enables personal and therefore ethical comprehension as moral freedom unfolds--while the alternatives of scientistic determinism, monistic idealism or existential anxiety curtail this comprehension and growth.

It is common wisdom that every person needs the serenity to accept the things he cannot change, the courage to change the things he can, and the wisdom to know the difference. But the philosophers task is to go further in order to uncover how the objective realities undergird and direct the exercise of freedom, for this gives the objective order its fully humane meaning. Understanding this is the special task of the present volume and explains in turn its synthetic structure. For the effort is not to establish one mode of ethics against all others, but to invoke the special competencies of each in a cooperative project intended to reinforce the objective dimension of the ethics as a science and to lay a foundation for a similar development of the dimension of subjectivity in the following volume. Together they will undergird a study of the recent emergence of the cultural dimension of ethics in the third volume as the new possibility for a fruitful integration of both objectivity and subjectivity.

This first volume has two parts. The first concerns what might be considered the substructures of an objective ethics, this is, attention to the external situation, pragmatic reasoning and social compromise. The second part concerns more properly normative character of an objective ethics.

Part I begins with three papers which are concerned that ethics account of objective circumstances in which people live and with regard to which their difficult moral decision must be made. Abraham Edel examines the role of pragmatic tests for the ordering and reordering of human action. Joseph Fletcher agrees but wishes to see how this process can be guided by a further sense of love as motive force for acting thus. Vincent Punzo would want to introduce as will in mode of developing moral principles resulting in authentic practical wisdom.

However this focus upon weighing the changing circumstances of moral judgment is itself relativized as it is situated within the great geo-political ideologies of recent times. It is possible to read Marxism as a scientific integration of all that is objective into a necessitating dialectic. The chapter of Howard Parsons is appreciative of this objective and integrating capability. More basically, however, he is concerned to show the humanistic and social concerns which can underlie and inspire this project which, despite its recent political check, remains an influential factor in social movements and indeed in social and historical sciences.

The chapter of Peter Caws remains on this level, but with a quite different goal. This chapter is not concerned with what Rawler would call the different comprehensive visions, ethical or otherwise, which people might work out to inspire and guide their lives. Rather, given the diversity of these, its concern is how people and peoples can reach some moral agreement in these pluralistic circumstances.

With regard to ethics as normative, however, the above factors remain preparatory and supportive. Here they may be referred to as substructures, for they concern the given physical, personal and social realities, their changing character, and their ability to constitute possible goods among which one must chose.

But ethics goes further than presenting opportunities for practical action; it proceeds to speak of, indeed to constitute, the guides, norms and obligations of which the challenge, and at times the cross, of human responsibility is constituted. Without these norms, life would be as meaningless as a rudderless ship at the mercy of external winds and internal whimsy; with these norms, however, it can undertake the great actions in which personal and social accomplishment consist. But with these come also lasting obligations which test our will, bind us to others, and challenge our fortitude and commitment. It is most essential then that here--perhaps beyond other areas--we understand the foundations on which moral obligations are based, the norms by which they are delineated, guided and integrated, and the combination of freedom and love which makes possible their fulfillment.

All this is the purpose of Part II: "Ethics as Objective and Normative". This turns first to the foundations of ethics in the dignity of human person. The unfolding appreciation of these in the various schools of philosophy--empirical, deontological and ontological--is traced in the chapter by G.F. McLean. David Schindler focuses this upon the ethical sphere by studying in detail the strengths and limits of the theory of L. Kohlberg. Here Schindler is concerned to identify a more adequate basis for moral judgment. This effort is carried further in the chapters of John Farrelly on the constitutive human good and William May on the seat of the moral worth of the human person.

The second subsection of Part II turns to the notion of natural law and normative reasoning. Vernon Bourke applies his life-long study of classical Scholastic ethics to articulating reason as moral norm, while Germain Grisez examines methods of ethical enquiry, integrating the insights of classical modern philosophy with a view to a contemporary evolution of natural-law reasoning.

Ethics, however, is not merely an individual matter, as often has been thought in the past. It is of the greatest importance to social life and is greatly impacted in turn by the life of society. Hence, in the last subsection of Part II it is important to consider the way in which normative reasoning engages, and is engaged by, the life of society. This is done by Patrick Coffey in his chapter on the role of prudential judgment in ethics and by philosopher-jurist John Noonan on the relation between natural law and positive law.

This volume constitutes then a concerted response by philosophers to the challenge of identifying the context and the components of an objective normative ethics for our times. It is not intended as a survey of all the factors involved: that would be so broad a task that it would limit outcomes to the superficial. Rather, it is a coordinated series of probes on key issues chosen in order to explore the situation of ethics at the crossroads. Specifically here in volume I, the effort is to construct the pillars of a response to the requirements and the possibilities of its objective dimension in our time.

This effort is not exclusive to philosophers, but has been undertaken as well by the Church as a great perennial moral teacher now facing new ethical and moral challenges. In the early `60s, in the Second Vatican Council, the Church was the first to take up the challenge to objective moral norms from the new attention to human subjectivity, its impact upon the religious roots of cultures, and hence upon social and personal moral life. The new development of attention to human subjectivity contributed greatly to the development of ethical sensitivity, as will be studied in volumes II and III. Being inexpertly managed, as necessarily are all new enterprises, the new developments, along with their great positive contribution, have had a relatively corrosive effect on the appreciation of the objective dimension of ethics treated in this first volume.

John Paul II as a philosopher before becoming Pope had focused upon the way in which the objective dimensions of the human person and of ethics continue and are enriched by the new attention to subjectivity. It is natural then that on these concerns he should write a relatively lengthy encyclical, Splendor Veritatis, setting then within the rich context of the long Christian religious experience. No. 115 notes that "this is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching, and presented their principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial."

It seems useful therefore to include this document in its entirety as Appendix I to this volume on normative ethics. The first chapter of Splendor Veritatis provides a detailed unfolding of the contribution of the religious context to the moral dimension of life. It sees this particularly in intensifying the sense of human dignity through the teaching on the Incarnation and the vocation to share therein. The second chapter of the document studies the relation between human freedom and truth in considerably more comprehensive and integrated a manner than the previous sections of this volume. In so doing it develops also a defense of an objective ethics in the face of the challenges of scientism, subjectivism and relativism, all of them recent trends in ethics and moral theology. Finally, in its third chapter the encyclical speaks to the practical implications of objectivity and normativity in facing the moral dilemmas of our times.

By implication, this appendix, as the entire volume, raises the question of what might be at the root of the correlative and more recent attention to subjectivity. A initial sense of this can be garnered from a brief reflexion on the Encyclical by Paul Ricoeur made from his phenomenological and Protestant perspective. It is included here as appendix II in order to open critical distance from this volume's focus upon the objective and normative, and to lead into volume II on subjectivity and ultimately to the beginnings of their synthesis in volume III on ethics and culture. Together the three volumes should contribute to understanding the crossroads at which ethics finds itself in our days and to the effort to develop at this juncture a view of the moral life which is structured by effective normative guides, enlivened by creative freedom, and enriched by the multiple cultural experiences of all humankind.