Ethics?

The title “The Limit of Ethics – The Ethics of the Limit” may give rise to two questions, at least. First, why should we talk about ethics when we are dealing with the religious in responses to mass atrocities? This first question reverses a question that could be posed to the title of this book: Why focus on religion in responses to mass atrocities? Mass atrocities are morally horrifying. In dealing with responses to mass atrocities we are in the sphere of morality or ethics. Why should responses to mass atrocities go beyond ethics in invoking the religious? One could, of course, argue that religious responses to mass atrocities are in fact deeply moral. But I take it that what we are asking about is the religious in a sense in which it cannot just be translated into a moral response.

Second, if we are in the sphere of ethics, why should we then talk about the limit of ethics? As the first question opens up the issue between ethics and religion, the second leads into my argument: We have to ask about the limit of ethics, both to understand why the religious can enter the picture, in response to what is morally horrifying, and to understand what is ethically at stake, also in religious responses. Th e limit of ethics implies an ethics of the limit.