Joseph Arntz

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Joseph Arntz

• An Anti-Conformist Ethicist

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A Practical Ethicist

• Joseph T. C. Arntz (1919-1981)
• Born Nijmegen, Netherlands
• Close to mother only child, father died before
  born
• Taught ethics at OP Study Centre for Philosophy
  in Zwolle
• Taught social ethics at Catholic University of
  Brabant in Tilburg
• Nijmegen RC university PhD on love in the
  ontology of Sartre (1960)
• Published on problems facing RC women,
  unemployment leisure, poverty, religion in
  politics

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Herman Coenen on Arntz

• He had to the greatness of the meek, who do what
  has to be done without any fuss. For that reason
  it was not accidental that he repeatedly
  criticised any kind of calculating mentality or
  cold and ruthless way of using power. His ethical
  reflections again and again led him to the virtue
  of wisdom, pursuing the good without lapsing
  into hardness and continuously taking its
  starting-point from concrete circumstances a
  completely human ethics.

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Church Ethics

• 1965 response to Reformed Church statement on
  political relations
• for theological reasons, human ethics have to be
  autonomous in relation to the teaching of the
  Church.
• God humans not opposing worldly factors
• Christians need to be able to talk to
  non-Christians

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Military Democracy?

• 1960s Cold War debate on conscientious objection
• Just war an intellectually bankrupt idea
• war both preserves denies the value of the
  human person
• Rights of the state derived from those of the
  individual
• Any individual killed is part of the state not
  justified
• Atomic weapons not justified
• War should not be total breaks down the law of
  war
• With total weapons, war is no longer ethically
  possible
• Need human structures to mediate conflict
• Solutions are not found. Solutions have to be
  made. That is all an ethicist may say.

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Poverty

• Inaugral address at Tilburg 1968 on poverty as a
  philosophical problem
• Absolute poverty only in death
• Relative poverty in shortage of food, clothes
  housing
• A question of human dignity
• lack of accomodation, language, power security
• following Heidegger Bauen, Wohnen Denken
  necessary for human life
• lack of dignity for some affects us all

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Catholics in Politics

• Commented on PVDA (Labour Party)s new 1978
  manifesto
• Philosophers limited influence on C20th Dutch
  society
• personalism broke down individualism
  existentialism gave factuality to it,
• critical philosophy gave those abstraction a name
  meaning
• alienation from the social situation
• Context of Protestant political dominance until
  they needed a Catholic alliance after WWII
• Bishops told Catholics to vote only for the
  separate Catholic party, follow only Catholic
  media
• Arntz, like many other Catholics, saw this as a
  serious mistake
• 1980 Catholic Protestant parties merged into
  what is now the Christian Democratic Appeal

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A Church Voice for Ethics

• Article in Wending (1977) on ethical
  responsibility re. businesses working in
  apartheid South Africa
• 2 types of decisions based on conscience
• Kantian decisions as a universal legislator
• Kirkegaardian individual decisions before God
  alone like Abraham over Isaac, Arntz favours
• Yet conscience is not just ones own
• norms values come from others
• so individual conscience has a social dimension
• The Church speaks from the perspective of
  salvation
• seeking a better society inspired by the gospel,
  should guide all our actions
• so a call to conversion has economic implications
• Church should make universal ethical
  proclamations, calling for conversion, but these
  are not just an ethical command

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