Hatab: Ethical Decisions

Temporal   finitude is also indicated in the structure of ethical decisions, where the openness of the future is given shape through the present in the midst of the past. Ethical decisions are more a creative bringing-forth compared with other kinds of thinking and acting. In deciding what to do ethically, I shape a scenario out of possibilities, a scenario that remains permeated by possibilities and uncertainties. If I decide to tell the truth to a friend about a delicate matter, I set in motion a course of events that otherwise would not   happen and that is marked by uncertain outcomes. This creative element is what distinguishes ethical “acts” from causal “effects” or fact-based inferences. Such temporal openness accounts for the existential stress that often accompanies ethical decisions, owing to the perceived tensions, limits, complexities, and uncertainties attached to moral   situations. Ethical action is more a task than an “event,” and it is fundamentally different from certain other sequences in experience and thought. Here is where the perennial association of ethical action with freedom is given an existential orientation. Not only is freedom seemingly intrinsic to moral responsibility, it is phenomenologically evident in the unsettled and unsettling experience of moral performance.