Obedience at the time of Necessità : Dietrich Bonhoeffer''s Theory of Resistance.

This paper seeks to draw out a theory of resistance from the writings of the German Protestant Theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), in the process showing one possible avenue political and moral theorizing can take when attempting to reconcile the desirability of theoretical universalism or rationalism on the one hand, and the apparent impossibility of truly systematizing the world that exceptional circumstances reveal on the other. Bonhoeffer was a scholar and pastor grounded in the philosophical and theological traditions of Germany, and his conception of the state, obedience, and authority is unsurprisingly similar to the positions advocated by Martin Luther and Immanuel Kant. Like both of these thinkers, Bonhoeffer claims that under no circumstances may a citizen permissibly resist the state. However, unlike Luther and Kant, Bonhoeffer simultaneously refuses to claim that an unjust regime always deserves obedience, that such universal claims are even possible, and instead attempts to mitigate between strongly emphasizing the necessity of government and recognizing the need for a response to state perpetuated atrocities and other sorts of exceptional circumstances. Faced with the injustice and brutality of the Nazi regime, and having exhausted permissible modes of disobedience, Bonhoeffer took the unlikely step of becoming a triple agent in the Abwehr. Under the guise of a Nazi spy traveling to international ecumenical conferences to collect information on Allied activities, he distributed details about Nazi atrocities, attempted to gain Allied support for a planned coup, helped smuggle Jews outside of Germany in "Operation 7", and took part in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. During these conspiratorial activities, Bonhoeffer wrote, attacking both deontological and teleological ethical systems and replacing them with a contextualist approach in which ethical principles are absolute, while simultaneously only provisionally authoritative due to the importance of considering them alongside concrete reality and the needs of others. In times of normalcy, resistance is prohibited and the traditional elements of ethical behavior are appropriate, true, and demanded. However, during necessita, a concept Bonhoeffer adapts from Machiavelli, the responsible person must perform an act of free responsibility, deviating from ethical principles and attacking the very laws he seeks to preserve and reestablish. Such action is exceptional, ethically unacceptable, and lacks the assurance of being the correct choice. Bonhoeffer thus presents a theory that accommodates revolutionary activity in the direst circumstances, but characterizes such action as exceedingly difficult, soaked with guilt, indefinable, and paradoxically driven by communal concerns yet enacted in complete isolation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]