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the ethics of dag hammarskjöld Soviet Union’s demand to resign. Inge Lønning rightly uses it as illustration to make the point that conviction is political and lasting. As he points out, within such an understanding vocation turns into Beruf , and finally into Berufung (maybe best translated as ‘calling’). I could not agree more with the speaker’s suggestion that although Friedrich Nietzsche would most likely have judged Hammarskjöld’s posthumously published personal notes as Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen (views out of tune with the times) they are in fact very much zeitgemäß (in tune with the times). His morality and religion, I repeat, were political and translated into politics which set the norm for every Secretary- General following him. When Hammarskjöld understands the United Nations as an ‘instrument of faith’, then this must be understood as a commitment to fundamental human values and norms guiding the struggle for a better life for all. It is a deeply secular agenda that cannot be seen as detached from the spiritual signposts guiding his mission. A mission indeed it was. While Inge Lønning put the emphasis in exploring the framework for this mission more on the ethical dimensions guided by religion, I would like to refer in the remaining time to some of the political dimensions this implied. For his own understanding of the role of an international civil servant – a concept he shaped, which has lasted until today as the ultimate criterion for service in the United Nations system – he already insisted in an address at John Hopkins University in Baltimore on 14 June 1955 that ‘many ethical problems take on a new significance and our need to give sense to our lives exceeds the inherited standards’ (Falkman 2005: 64). He points to the need that inherited and conventional ideas will not protect us and allow us to live lazily: 40 Intellectually and morally, international service therefore requires the courage to admit that you, and those you represent, are wrong when you find them to be wrong,
the ethics of dag hammarskjöld even in the face of a weaker adversary, and courage to defend what is your conviction even when you are facing the threats of powerful opponents. But while such an outlook exposes us to conflicts, it also provides us with a source of inner security; for it will give us ‘self-respect for our shelter’. (Ibid: 65) Already two years in office, then, he mapped out what he continued to practise as an international civil servant: the virtue of uncompromising integrity in the execution of the mandate and the pursuance of the course. On 31 October 1956, during the Suez crisis, he stated before the Security Council in no uncertain terms that in his view ‘the discretion and impartiality…imposed on the Secretary-General… may not degenerate into a policy of expediency’ (Falkman 2005: 120-121). In this he articulated a belief that he would later reiterate in his introduction to the Annual Report of the UN for 1959-1960: It is my firm conviction that any result bought at the price of a compromise with the principles and ideals of the Organization, either by yielding to force, by disregard of justice, by neglect of common interests or by contempt for human rights, is bought at too high a price. That is so because a compromise with its principles and purposes weakens the Organization in a way representing a definite loss for the future that cannot be balanced by any immediate advantage achieved. (Falkman 2005: 71) Throughout his eight years in office Dag Hammarskjöld lived what he put into a final legacy on ‘The International Civil Service in Law and in Fact’ in his address at Oxford University on 30 May 1961 – not much more than a hundred days before his untimely death. As he stated then: 41
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