An Interval of Grace: The Time of Ethics

Abstract

In the preliminary introduction, we point to Schopenhauer’s ethics and philosophy of religion and to his peculiar understanding of the notion of freedom as grace. On the basis of this constellation, we then start with three Meadian analyses. We first introduce the topics of space and touch in the discussion of Mead’s philosophy of intersubjectivity and the related problem of an ethical temporality. We try to demonstrate the importance of the so called “interval” in ethics, understood in a temporal as well as spatial sense. For this purpose, we offer three Meadian meditations by reading (in both a philosophical and a religious way) Ludwig Feuerbach’s, Jean-Louis Chrétien’s, and Watsuji Tetsurō’s texts and by relating them to Mead’s original inception of the philosophy of intersubjectivity. Finally, by reading Benjamin Libet’s Mind Time in an ethical register, we argue for a “theological” extension of Mead’s philosophy also by indicating the nature of the ethical “interval” and the related phenomenon of ethical temporality as grace.