From where do humans derive their sense of oughtness? This is the crucial question of ethics or philosophy which Michael Eneyo addresses in his third major book Ethics: Judging Morality Beyond the Limits of Man after Philosophy of Fear: A Move to Overcoming Negative Fear (2018)and Philosophy of Unity: Love as an Ultimate Unifier (2019). The question, where do humans derive their sense of oughtness, that is, the sense of right and wrong, good and bad, commend or condemn, praise or blame, has been answered in various ways and there are avalanches of ethical theories that address this question.
In Michael Eneyo’s new book he focuses on two dominant theories-Teleologism and Deontologism. Teleologism is any ethical theory that defines moral rightness or wrongness in terms of the desirability or undesirability of an action’s consequences.
Deontologism on the other hand is any ethical theory which defines the moral rightness or wrongness of an act in terms of the intrinsic value of the act. According to deontological ethics, our duty to perform an action (or to refrain from doing it) is based on the nature of the act itself and not on its consequences. To illustrate these two theories, Eneyo adopts Fletcher’s situationist ethics to exemplify teleologism. For the situationists, no moral laws can be practiced universally, but each gains its sanction from the specific situation. Thus for the situationist the moral sense, is dependent on specific situations and consequences.
Immanuel Kant’s popular theory of the categorical imperative is adopted to illustrate deontologism. According to Kant, a categorical imperative is a command that is binding on all rational persons at all times, which generates universal moral laws. It commands us to always act in such a way that we could rationally wish that everyone followed the principle governing that action.
Michael Eneyo states that his main objective in the book is to argue the point that the standard of moral sense or morality ought to go beyond ”human limitations”, whether of considerations of consequences of action, situation, human subjective reasoning, legality, or of societal, business or personal codes. For Eneyo, Man cannot be the “measure of all things”, most importantly and definitely, not the measure or determinant of morality.
In a very methodic, unassuming and audacious manner, Michael Eneyo in this ten-chapter book seeks to unravel a realm of moral standards, evaluation and judgment which transcends human relativism, subjectivism and limitations.
The first Chapter introduces the subject matter of ethics as the science of morals and moral judgment. The second Chapter engages discourses on some moral issues. Here the author introduces novel idea of ‘’The Given’’ and ‘’The Giver’’. This is to lay the foundation for his subsequent postulations in later chapters.
Chapter Three and Four are a detailed exposition and rigorous engagement with Joseph Fletcher’s teleological Situation ethics’, and Chapters Five and Six engage Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethical theory with equal critical rigour.
Eneyo opines that neither the teleological approach to morality nor the deontological approach offer an adequately all-embracing and comprehensive explanation of the basis or foundations of moral standard, evaluation and judgment which will not be hampered by human limitations, which for Eneyo is essentially selfish, and therefore, in itself immoral.
Consequently the author’s challenge is to ‘’give moral philosophy a new paradigm that can be used in fostering global unity and mutual coexistence that is tailored with peace and love’’.
The task of Chapters Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten is to articulate this ‘’new paradigm’’. Chapter Seven deals with various conceptualisations of the notion of ‘’God’’ including, very interestingly, the atheists perspective of God. In Chapter Eight Eneyo advances arguments and ‘’proofs’’ of God as the giver of moral standards. This postulation, known in ethics as the ‘’Divine Command Theory’’ is by no means original to Eneyo, but Eneyo’s reconstruction or further development of the ethical theory is in his idea of ‘’The Given’’ and ‘’The Giver’’ which he employs to graphically produce a moral chart to establish a thesis that ‘’All moral acts ought to be done for the sake of duty to God, and not just for the sake of duty alone’’. Thus Eneyo extends the Kantian formulation. The author even goes ahead in Chapter Eight to highlight Biblical support for both situationism and moral imperativism.
The penultimate ninth chapter Nine addresses the ‘’challenges to becoming a moral man in a corrupt society’’. For Eneyo, the main challenge to becoming a moral man in a corrupt society is to develop that ‘’God consciousness’’ which enables a person to grasp the concept of morality and its applications as emanating from God Himself and the acknowledgment that human actions or conduct ought to be controlled and directed by the will of God.
Apparently, Eneyo anticipates that the consequential question here will be, how do humans know the will of God? Read the Ninth chapter for the author’s answer.
In Chapter Ten, the author reaffirms his argument that morality does not depend on the standard of man, our show of love in a given situation, or our personal reason for actions, but on the law of God which is already written in the hearts of humankind, as the Christian scripture declares. In this concluding chapter, Eneyo takes his theory from that level of theoria and articulates the possibility of praxis of his convictions. He addresses the question, how can we live a sound moral life, in practical terms. To answer this question, he identifies choice, timing, value, compromise, comparnionahip, secret and reward as presuppositions that must be put into consideration in taking the necessary steps towards living a morally sound life.

Department of Philosophy
University of Calabar, Nigeria.
Furthermore, according to Eneyo there are four essential steps which need to be followed in our aspiration to live morally. These are the cultivation of love; the development of understanding; a strong sense of commitment and an aspiration to holiness. In the final analysis, Eneyo submits that morality ought to be judged beyond the limits of man, because, man being himself the subject of morality and man being essentially selfish and interest-seeking ought not to be prosecutor and adjudicator in his own case. Thus Eneyo postulates God, a Super-Being, The Giver as the supreme standard of moral oughtness.
Michael Eneyo has brought forth a very interesting book which has been very elegantly written. My impression is that if you read a line, you would read a page; and if you read a chapter, you would inexorably read the entire work, . Every page beckons on you to read and turn over to the next. page beckons on you to flip over to the next. Eneyo has attempted in this work to reconstruct the Divine Command theory in Ethics, which he called “The Giver-Given theory of Ethics”. Whereas the author took time to rigorously and critically engage the teleological theory of Joseph Fletcher and the deontological theory of Immanuel Kant, he presents his divine command approach to ethics as if the theory is flawless and without problems. This to my mind is an academic limitation of Eneyo’s quite commendable effort in creativity and originality. The author will have to prepare his defence on a charge of intellectual ‘’sermonising’’, sometime, elsewhere as this book receives the anticipated wide readership.
For the “Giver-Given theory of ethics”, certain assumptions are settled and taken for granted. First is that God, a Super-Being exists. Second is that He has a will which can be discerned. Third is that He commands moral standard and is the foundation or basis of moral standard, evaluation and judgment and finally, that these moral oughtness is “written” in the hearts of humankind and we are obligated to obey God’s commands.
It is the nature of philosophy to question all taken-for-granted assumptions and settled questions. So I shall liberty to make a few critical comments about Michael Eneyo’s Theory. In my view, the Giver-Given theory of ethics is a religion-based ethics, and one question that can be raised regarding all religion-based ethics is whether the rightness of a moral principle is derived from its having been commanded by God or whether the rightness is inherent in the principle itself. For example, does loving one’s neighbour (or enemy) become right when God declares it so or was it always right? Are moral values invented by God or discovered by Him, created or revealed as correct? Does God will that human beings perform an action purely in obedience to his commands or is there a moral reason why certain acts are required of man? In short, is an act right because God wills it, or does God will it because it is right?
Eneyo may adopt the first proposition, arguing that what makes something right is that it is commanded by God. However, if this position were correct, then God could make hating one’s neighbour right or taking revenge on an enemy right by willing it. Of course that does not seem possible. Obviously, the God of the Judao-Christian tradition to which Eneyo subscribes would never will such values, but the point is that he could not do so even if he wanted to. God could not make right wrong or wrong right by an act of will. Therefore, we have to conclude that God commands various actions because he recognises them to be right in and of themselves. The implication of this conclusion is extremely important, because it means a moral principle is right in itself and not because it is issued by God. And it would remain right even if there were no God to point it out. A secular ethic then becomes possible, for the rightness of action does not depend upon divine pronouncements. God is not the basis (or moral principles; ethics is not founded on religions. Therefore it is meaningful to believe in ethical principles even if one doesn’t believe in God.
Furthermore, the Giver-Given theory is essentially based upon the Bible, which is a notoriously difficult document to interpret, not because it is impenetrable but because it lends itself to diverse readings. The Bible may be infallible but people do not interpret it infallibly and disputes have raged for centuries over the true meaning of key passages. Whether the words were inspired by the spirit of God or whether the writing was automatically produced by God “pushing the pen”, errors are bound to occur in transcribing and comprehending the message. To try to extract a fundamental ethic, as Eneyo has done in this work, from a welter of conflicting interpretations and positions is certainly a risky business.
Other critical comments can be raised against Eneyo Giver-Given moral theory, but I must reiterate that Michael Eneyo has come out with a potentially great book that would be valuable for studies in Ethics. Thus I recommend this book for students, teachers, researchers, social crusaders, political leaders and to any one who desires an ethical compass to guide his life on the moral path to attain holiness.
Mesembe Ita Edet PhD Associate Professor,
Department of Philosophy
University of Calabar, Nigeria.