This paper briefly explores the ontological ethics of St. Maximus the
Confessor in light of the modern shame/guilt distinction. As many
prominent commentators have affirmed, a virtue-based or ontological
sense of ethics is intrinsic to or at least presupposed by the
Confessor's great theological synthesis. Appropriating but
simultaneously transcending Aristotelian naturalism, Maximus establishes
the chief virtue of love as the ontological locus of being, the δύναμις
that enables the eschatological wholeness of nature and genuine
reciprocity between rational beings. Inasmuch as every authentic virtue
constitutes a manifestation of love and its nature-constituting
properties, the habituation of virtue and the resulting disposition
occur in relation to an ‘other'. The activity of virtue is an ontic
movement towards one's Creator and fellow creatures, achieving a
functional community of nature and a perichoretic relationship with the
divine. Conversely, an unvirtuous disposition and the habituation of
vice facilitate a rupture in nature and movement towards solipsism. As
this essay proposes, the reciprocal or relational approach to virtue
manifested in the Confessor's synthesis is consistent with the criteria
of certain modern ethical approaches that affirm the natural superiority
of the emotion of shame over the individuating character of guilt. The
ethical dimensions of the Confessor's synthesis, therefore, constitute a
very interesting and provocative alternative to the majority of
contemporary Christian approaches to morals, which, in Kantian fashion,
typically fixate upon the autonomous fulfilment of abstracted principles
and rely on the inner-directed emotion of guilt to correct behavioural
lapses.
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