The Global Ethic Project Lives On

On April 6, 2021, Hans Küng died in Tübingen, where he had lived and taught since 1960. Five years later, there is a public debate about the place he deserves in the Catholic Church—whether he should be rehabilitated, and how his theological positions should be assessed today. But this focus on Küng falls short. For he was more than just the most influential theologian of the Second Vatican Council, as the New York Times honored him in its obituary—and certainly much more than the “critic of the Pope” whom Rome stripped of his teaching license in 1979.

Küng belonged, as the then-President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert put it in a 2009 eulogy, to those rare personalities who have shaped the “self-image of a continent, of our modern civilization.” Küng himself saw himself—following the Chinese philosopher and friend Tu Weiming—as a globally active “public intellectual” who combines cultural sensitivity, political vigilance, and social commitment. In other words, as a scholar who gets to the bottom of things, takes a public stand, and intervenes in social processes. Someone who integrates analysis and action. Not merely a problem-poser, but someone who aims for solutions. To that end, he engaged in dialogue—with popes and presidents, entrepreneurs and musicians, kings, and, of course, with “fellow students,” as Küng used to address his audience in packed lecture halls.

His life’s work is the Global Ethic project. Launched in 1990 with a slim volume—the NZZ newspaper described it as “a powerful speech, not unlike a prophetic gesture”—adopted in 1993 as a declaration by the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, institutionalized in 1995 as the Global Ethic Foundation, and presented in 2001 before the United Nations General Assembly. The guiding principle is as simple as it is ambitious: This one world needs no single religion and no single ideology, but it does need common fundamental ethical orientations—values, norms, and attitudes that unite and bind people together. Precisely a common fundamental ethos: standards of human coexistence embodied in flesh and blood, customs, and institutions.

For societies are fundamentally held together not by power or markets, but by shared standards of humanity. By an orientation toward the “humanum,” which, as an attitude, shapes our behavior and the conditions under which we live together. To orient oneself toward principles and values of humanity also means being capable of dialogue. And it means measuring character, customs, organizations, and institutions by their contribution to peaceful coexistence. For where forms of lived humanity and the capacity for dialogue break down, conflicts escalate into crises and wars. In a globally interconnected world, these strengths and weaknesses become the key question of civilization.

Küng did not merely pose these questions in theory; he brought them to a head in practice. Early on, he extended the call to reflect on a shared global ethic to the worlds of business and politics. Küng first presented his global ethics argument publicly in 1990 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2009, together with business ethicists Klaus Leisinger and Josef Wieland, he drafted the “Manifesto for a Global Business Ethos,” which was presented within the framework of the United Nations. This was followed in 2010 by Küng’s book *Decent Business: Why Economics Needs Morality*. Moving beyond an ethics of conviction that indiscriminately discredits the pursuit of profit, and beyond an ethics of success focused solely on profit maximization, his aim is to understand economic action as a practice of globally responsible freedom. He views the ethically and ecologically enlightened social market economy as a global peace project.

For us at the Global Ethic Institute, this has become a working program: “Decent Economics. In Global Responsibility.” So: How can we shape the economy and society in such a way that we can live and work together in diversity on a habitable Earth? Or simply: What does it mean to act decently—toward oneself, toward others, toward future generations? These questions cannot be delegated. They demand judgment and conviction.

Here, we are guided not only by Küng’s work, but also by the work of the many theologians, economists, social scientists, and philosophers who have further developed the Global Ethic project. This work offers three insights that we wish to share: guidance in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and where the need for reliable standards is growing. Encouragement, because we do not need to reinvent ways of living that are humane, but can carefully build upon proven religious, cultural, economic, and social practices. And a commitment to better practice, because since 1990 the project has shown us how every single person can make a difference through their attitudes and actions in daily life and at work.

Five years after his death, Hans Küng’s Global Ethic is not a legacy we simply manage. It is a mission we continue at the Institute and in the Foundation—and to which we invite all people who wish to better understand our world, take responsibility in the workplace and in daily life, and work together to shape it for the better.