Individual Moral Behaviour

On Being a Moral Agent

Behind the great – and worthy – questions about ethics that philosophers ponder on lie the more pragmatic questions concerning our daily moral conundrums: How exactly am I supposed to act in such and such situation? What exactly is expected of me? What does it mean to be ‘a good person’, if that even is the goal here? Where does my responsibility ends and that of others begin? And how will I know the answer to these questions?

What these questions evoke is the reality of each of us as moral agents, as individuals whose behaviour always has a moral dimension. This is an inescapable complexity everyone faces, courtesy of our conscious ability to reflect upon our actions and motivations! This is where consciousness meets conscience, where our ability to perceive and make sense of a reality encounters the need to deal with the differing perceptions and sense-making of other beings. The moment we become conscious of an ‘other’, we are confronted with a different reality, a different experience, and we have to accommodate it. How we accommodate this new and different experience depends on the conscience we then develop: we start to observe, to sense, to feel, to search, to probe, to step back, to assess, until we are ready to make a formal move. Then, in that response to this new situation, to what the ‘other’ offers, we start drawing the lines of our conscience, of that ever-so-fine balance between maintaining the integrity of our self and respecting the integrity of the other. 

Being a moral agent is not easy. Knowing that we are a moral agent does not make it any easier, because with this knowledge comes the realization how our responsibility towards ourselves and towards all these ‘others’ – a responsibility that is both individual and collective, a responsibility we can never shrug off. Yet, with conscious understanding of our inescapable moral responsibility also comes the ability to make more inspired decisions, to find more creative answers, to imagine alternatives to the present reality when that reality seems to perpetuate harm over care. Knowing that we are a moral agent means that we can act consciously and with conscience, and that this conscience can expand furthermore with each act we do, with each intention we consciously craft, with each new experience we consciously welcome as a new learning. 

Jungian Psychology and Individual Moral Behaviour

A great deal of my research and writings have explored the complexity of individual moral behaviour through the lens of Jungian Psychology. Indeed, Jung’s understanding of the psyche and his reflections on how psychological dynamics play out in human behaviour has profound implications for our understanding of ethics and moral agency.

The following citation from Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963/1995, p.362) illustrates this very well:

‘As a rule…the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. …Every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and such ideals are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will. What is more, nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching. Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish – as he ought – to live without self-deception or self-illusion.’

Jung’s depiction of human beings as moral agents in need of ‘self-knowledge’ that is neither arrogant nor naïve presents us with the most demanding ethical challenge of all: to acknowledge that we are also shadow and not just light; and to fully understand what it means to be both shadow and light, always, ceaselessly. Only then can we begin to act with responsibility and with care.