Moral Compass Project to be expanded

Photo: Rector Klaas Spronk and Paradosis director Marten Knevel.

The call of the Good

The Moral Compass Project was launched in 2018 and investigates how we can meaningfully reflect on what is the right thing to do today. This seems difficult in times with apparently few shared values and in which each person is allowed to determine what is good for themselves. Yet people continue to experience the Good as something they do not so much determine but that appeals to them in a way they cannot ignore. Experiencing this appeal does not imply people master the Good or can realise it. The Good (with a capital G) is beyond their concrete actions; it is transcendent. The new projects are investigating how we can do justice to this call of the transcendent Good in three areas:

• The moral compass of soldiers (Thijs Oosterhuis). Soldiers must fight for the good, peace, in a setting of violence or the threat of violence. How do they track down that good? What is their compass? What room is there for individual moral positioning if they are simply to carry out their orders on a mission? War and Peace is also the research area of Prof. Pieter Vos, professor of Ethics and Spiritual Care in the Armed Forces, who will have more research capacity thanks to this project.
• The moral position of family in end-of-life care for people with dementia (Trijntje Scheeres-Feitsma). Dementia requires a great deal of care from family. Family often provides this care as a matter of course, while the person with dementia does not want to impose this ‘burden’ on them. How should we understand this kind of moral interaction within families in end-of-life dementia care? And can we, as a society, account for it in policy and legislation?
• Kierkegaard and the idea of transparency (Stephan Wetzels). Our age strives for as much transparency as possible. Big Data technology is used for this purpose. People are approached as predictable beings with the aim of fitting their behaviour within desirable frameworks. How can the individual remain a person, open to the call of the Good? Kierkegaard's thinking is used to reflect on the value of the hidden self and the secret as a counterbalance to the one-sided focus on transparency.

Unlocking sources

It is not the first time that the question of how to live together in harmony has been experienced as extremely urgent. How do we find moral direction? The tension between concrete laws and the Good as transcendent is already visible in the Bible. There are, certainly in the Old Testament, extensive legal texts to direct to the Good, but besides one finds prayers for the Good as a gift from God. Even with the law in hand, humans are dependent on the gift of God's wisdom. This can sometimes seem like an exclusive gift. At the same time, however, good living together will only be complete when all nations gather in Jerusalem to honour God. In reflections on these Biblical notions, this tension turns out to be very fruitful for understanding morality. Taking this tension seriously has time and again led to criticism of the fixation of the Good in concrete laws or unwritten rules, and to a constructive attempt to do justice to the divine appeal. Sources from the time of ancient Judaism and early Christianity reflect extensively on this. Relatively little research has been done on these sources with a view to today's questions. Benjamin Bogerd will be doing just that in a new PhD project on the moral dimensions of apocalypticism under the supervision of Dr. Bärry Hartog.