March 27, 1956

We are discussing the problem of ethics and religion, and we should do it in three main steps, the first of which has been done last time. The first problem in ethics is the problem of the moral imperative and its unconditional character. The point I made last time was that the moral imperative is not unconditional because of any special content, but that it is unconditional because it expresses the essential nature of man as a person. We have defined the nature of this unconditional character by denying that any special form as such can be vested with the quality of unconditional, but that the experience of the self-affirmation of the person as a person, necessarily includes unconditional character.

Now this element of the unconditional was the first point, in which the ethical was transcended by the religious, or more exactly, in which the ethical included a dimension which must be called religious because it is the dimension of the ultimate, of the unconditional. I reminded you, I think, of Kant's argument for the existence of God, his moral argument, which was supposed to replace the theoretical arguments, which he had criticized; and I emphasized that this moral argument is not good either, as argument for the existence of God, but that it is a description of just that point which I am making, namely the unconditional character of the moral imperative.

Now after this has been discussed, we come to the second point, the question of the moral contents. This is a point of very large interest and importance. Here again I want to show only one thing. I don't want to build a system of ethics, a table of Commandments, or anything like that, but I want to ask the fundamental question: Where do the contents of the moral imperative—