ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses ethics and morality in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Orthodoxy, good and evil refer to life without limits and existential finitude (respectively) rather than to categories of behavior or moral laws. Therefore, good and evil are relational and experiential rather than categorical acts, placing Orthodoxy outside of deontological and teleological constructs. The Good is what leads to life in union with God in theosis. Although God’s essence (nature) remains unknowable and inaccessible, union with God in his energies is the Good toward which Orthodox praxis strives. Eastern Orthodox morality is brought into dialogue with Lacanian ethics in its movement beyond good and evil. Both Lacanian and Eastern Orthodox ethics approach rather than avoid das Ding. For Lacan, this is going beyond the pleasure principle and to the heart of desire in das Ding. Eastern Orthodoxy hagiography demonstrates the movement beyond good and evil and toward das Ding, and this chapter explores this ethic, including the contrast between Orthodox morality and the Sadean libertine or perversely structured subject.
