Joseph Arntz
An Anti-Conformist Ethicist
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…
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.
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 nonChristians
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.”
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
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
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 one’s 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’