Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2007, Page 33

The ethical demand, then, is also a demand of social and political action.
The demand can motivate such actions. But, as we have seen, the motivation
is indirect. It is not the very dependence on me of other humans that mo-
tivates me to show them unselfish love. Rather, the demand prompts some
kind of secondary motives, the most adequate of which is responsibility. This
complicated structure of motivation means that it is not possible to justify a
certain way of acting by referring to the demand. A person can only use as
justification the things also the outsider can see, and they are:
... the goal or objective of the action, its purely factual and rational basis.
(159).
This claim Logstrup also makes in connection with his famous rejection of
the idea of a specific Christian ethics:
The only thing to which a person him or herself can point with respect to his
or her action is therefore its objective goal and basis. If he or she claims to have
carried out some action or other at the prompting of the radical demand, there
is reason seriously to doubt his or her claim. (106).
L^gstrup’s own expression is that there is reason to show the greatest suspicion
(den allerstorste mistænksomhed). But even though the demand itself cannot
function as justification, it can as we have seen prompt social action. The
demand of one-sided action to the benefit of the other can cause motives for
substitute actions. There is, then, a social ethical demand in the sense of a de-
mand to the individual to perform such social acts as love would have done.
Economic Equality
In The Ethical Demand, Logstrup does not explicitly deal with the welfare
state. However, he discusses the distribution of wealth and the concept of
equality. He does so in order to illustrate the change of social norms. More
specifically, he contrasts the view of Luther and the view held in capitalist so-
cieties of his own time. While Luther regarded inequality in power and wealth
as a necessary feature of the social order, according to Logstrup, in our time