Narrow search


By category:

By publication type:

By language:

By journals:

By document type:


Displaying: 61-80 of 452 documents

0.126 sec

61. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
William McDonough Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die: "Complacentia Boni" as the Beginning of Acquired and Infused Virtue
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
NOT ALL READERS APPROACH DUTCH JEWISH DIARIST AND HOLOCAUST victim Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) appreciatively. Some find her too passive in the face of the Nazi terror. Literary scholar Rachel Brenner, however, praises Hillesum as embodying a "stubborn conviction that love is an inclusive force" for overcoming hatred. In this essay I accept Brenner's reading of Hillesum and attempt to theologize it. That is, I see in Hillesum's writing a deeply theological understanding of what love is and how it works in a human life. After defending Hillesum against her critics, I read her writings through the Thomistic categories of acquired and infused virtues and claim that Hillesum's writing could help Christian ethics recover a voice with which to speak helpfully about love in our day.
62. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Wyndy Corbin Reuschling "Trust and Obey": The Danger of Obedience as Duty in Evangelical Ethics
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN THIS ESSAY I EXPLORE THE WAYS IN WHICH OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY functions as a moral norm in evangelical ethics, with the potential of constraining and even endangering the multifaceted nature of Christian morality. I consider two particular sources of moral authority in evangelicalism: the Bible and leaders. I discuss the reasons and ways in which obedience to these two sources of moral authority functions in evangelical ethics and provide an ethical critique to these two moral norms and ethical practices. My primary aim is to expand an understanding of Christian morality that takes seriously the narrative dimensions of Christian ethics, conscience formation, moral agency, and skills in moral discernment.
63. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Jan Jans The Belgian "Act on Euthanasia": Clarifying Context, Legislation, and Practice from an Ethical Point of View
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF VARIOUS EUROPEAN LEGISLATIVE INITIAtlves dealing with medical-ethical decisions at the end of life and an introduction on the Belgian "Act on Euthanasia," in the first part of this essay I present a concise comparison between the Belgian law and the provisions of Dutch legislation. In the second part of the essay I aim at a better understanding of the Belgian legislation by documenting two (missed) opportunities that might have enhanced the outcome by addressing the complexity of end-of-life decisions and the proper position of palliative care. I offer some preliminary conclusions in light of the implementation of the law in Catholic institutions as well as its first official evaluation.
64. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
David A. Clairmont Bonaventure on Moral Motivation: Trajectories of Exemplification in His Treatment of Voluntary Poverty
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN THIS ESSAY I EXPLORE THE THEME OF MORAL MOTIVATION IN BONAventure's writings on evangelical poverty. By searching for an implied account of moral motivation in these more directly practical writings, I chart three trajectories of exemplification: meditation on the life of the exemplar as student and teacher (personal motivation), meditation on the exemplar as one who responds in a mediating way to social changes (social motivation), and meditation on the exemplar with respect to future control of one's own environment (temporal motivation). By examining each of these trajectories in Bonaventure's thought with reference to the case of voluntary poverty, I offer an account of moral motivation that embraces individual and psychological, as well as historical and institutional, aspects of moral exemplarity.
65. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
John Langan Hope in and for the United States of America
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN A CONTEXT IN WHICH THE COUNTRY IS SHARPLY POLARIZED AND ISSUES of public policy are deeply divisive, reflecting on the theological virtue of hope is instructive. The language of hope helps us see that ultimately our hope must be in God, not in a political entity. Nevertheless, we can have hope for the United States that is both generous and critical in spirit. Such hope allows us to chart a course between presumption and despair, and embracing such a hope would go a long way to healing the divisions that currently exist in the country.
66. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
Jennifer A. Herdt Virtue's Semblance: Erasmus and Luther on Pagan Virtue and the Christian Life
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
BOTH ERASMUS AND LUTHER WRESTLE WITH THE PROBLEM OF APPARENT virtue, although in divergent ways. Luther excludes the possibility of any habituation in true virtue that is not grounded in prior recognition of utter dependency on divine activity. Because social formation may simply conceal the absence of this essential starting point, it is always suspect. By contrast, Erasmus regards grace as working through human activity and by way of natural processes of social formation. He leaves room for gradual habituation in virtue that culminates rather than begins in recognition of true virtue as gift-grace. Thus, Erasmus is able both to countenance true pagan virtue and to offer a differentiated critique of particular social practices of the day that warped formation in Christian virtue. Retrieving an Erasmian critique of apparent virtue will allow a Christian ethics of virtue to avoid communal chauvinism while cultivating charity toward pagan virtue.
67. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 25 > Issue: 2
C. Melissa Snarr A New Discipline?: Beverly Harrison and "Malestream" Christian Ethics
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
FOR MANY INTERPRETERS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS, BEVERLY HARRISON'S work signals a break from mainstream, or "malestream," ethicists. Although Harrison certainly originated an important shift in Christian ethics, scholars need to recognize not only her breaks but also her continuity with the history of Christian ethics (e.g., her critical appropriation of H. Richard Niebuhr's theological anthropology and social-historical method). I contend that dominant male academic discourse can more easily exclude Harrison—and other feminists—from the conversation if her "themes do not comport" (see Hauerwas 1998) than if we see the connections with traditional "theological and ethical frames."
68. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Jeffrey H. Burack Jewish Reflections on Genetic Enhancement
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
WHAT COULD BE WRONG WITH SEEKING TO RESHAPE OURSELVES IN WAYS that we genuinely value? Jewish textual and cultural perspectives may add clarity and substance to the wider secular discussion of using genetic technologies for human enhancement. Judaism does not share the naturalism of Anglo-American bioethics; instead, it emphasizes covenantal responsibility for co-creation and stewardship of the body. Judaism tends to be more permissive about social uses of technology but more restrictive about personal aspirations and behavior. Enhancement technologies threaten the moral universals of humility, personal responsibility, and social solidarity, which are embodied in Jewish tradition as duties to God, self, and others. The tradition demands that we seek self-perfection while humbly and cautiously acknowledging that we can never arrive at it nor even know exactly what we seek.
69. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Helmut David Baer, Joseph E. Capizzi Just War Theory and the Problem of International Politics: On the Central Role of Just Intention
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN THIS ESSAY WE ARGUE FOR A RECONFIGURATION OF JUST WAR THEORY around the principle of just intention. A just intention—based just war theory can overcome problems inherent in two alternative "ideal-typical" accounts of just war theory. The "internationalist" account argues for the promotion of justice, by analogy to its pursuit in domestic politics. The "realist" account, on the other hand, favors the particular manifestations of justice within states. Taken together, these two accounts complement each other and emphasize genuine goods. The possibility of taken them together, however, arises only out of consideration of just war theory as a peacemaking activity, ordered to the end, or intention, of this political act. If just war theory is not so understood, there is no possibility of drawing together these two complementary accounts.
70. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Brett T. Wilmot Defending Democracy against Its "Cultured Despisers": A Critical Consideration of Some Recent Approaches
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
J. JUDD OWEN AND JEFFREY STOUT SUGGEST THE NEED TO RETHINK OUR understanding of the normative commitments of liberal democracy in response to recent challenges from its "cultured despisers" (e.g., Stanley Fish, Alaisdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank). In this essay I argue that Owen and Stout fail to redeem liberal democracy against these critics because they reject the possibility of constitutional neutrality with respect to an indeterminate plurality of religions. As a result, a religious test on citizenship is inevitable under any democratic constitution expressed in their terms, and this test lays liberal democracy open to the despisers' main line of attack. As an alternative, I offer a defense of constitutional neutrality that is based on the work of Franklin I. Gamwell, who has developed a compound conception of justice for this purpose. Gamwell systematically distinguishes between formative and substantive conceptions of justice and the role they play in a theory of constitutional democracy. On Gamwell's account, a democratic constitution expressed as a formative conception of justice will be neutral with respect to all substantive moral disagreement. As such, it can be consistently affirmed by the adherents of an indeterminate plurality of religions. This account of liberal democracy avoids a religious test on citizenship and therefore can overcome the core objection raised against it by its contemporary critics.
71. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Maria Antonaccio Asceticism and the Ethics of Consumption
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN THIS ESSAY I PRESENT NEW RESOURCES FOR THINKING ABOUT THE RElation between asceticism and ethics. The aims of the essay are threefold. The first is to highlight the work of scholars who interpret asceticism within the wider context of theories of moral formation and education in order to call attention to the cultural dimensions of asceticism. The second is to deploy ascetic concepts and tropes to analyze contemporary debates over the ethics of consumption and to suggest that asceticism may have surprising descriptive and diagnostic power in a culture marked by a pervasive consumerism. The third and final aim of the essay is to draw some of the constructive implications of this analysis for the debate over consumption and for the adequacy of naturalist versus nonnaturalist approaches to ethics.
72. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Ulrik B. Nissen Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Ethics of Plenitude
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, THE DEBATE ON RELIGION AND POLITICS HAS attracted considerable attention. One of the problems in this discussion has been the challenge to find a common ground of discourse while maintaining the identity of diverse worldviews. In this essay I argue—from a Christian viewpoint—that a reformulated understanding of the secular, understood as saeculum, may serve as the source of a view of the plenitude of human reality that overcomes this tension. Drawing on the theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Milbank, I argue that human reality is always partaking in divine reality, and as such there is no being apart from God. In the light of this view, I endorse a Christological affirmation of reality that enables us to move beyond an antagonism of secular and religious worldviews and ethics.
73. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Mary Hirschfeld Standard of Living and Economic Virtue: Forging a Link between St. Thomas Aquinas and the Twenty-First Century
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS IS INSTRUMENTAL IN CHARACTER, FOCUSING on the efficient realization of the sovereign desires of consumers. The emphasis on instrumental reasoning leaves little room for consideration of economic virtue. The tradition of Catholic social teaching has drawn on St. Thomas Aquinas for a framework that approaches economic problems through the lens of virtue. Thomas's thought, however, hinges on the socially determined standards of living of his day, which have no modern counterpart. The neglected consumer economist Hazel Kyrk (1886—1957) offers a theory of consumption that does center on the standard of living and thus offers us a bridge between Thomas's thought and our modern economic setting.
74. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
John R. Bowlin Tolerance among the Fathers
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
HOPING TO ADVANCE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT TOLERANCE INvolves and unsettling our assumptions about its history, in this essay I take a backward glance at some of the discourse about the virtue that emerged among the first Christian apologists in the debates they carried on with their pagan critics. Along the way, several conclusions come into view: that tolerance regards the objectionable differences of those with whom we share some sort of society, that the question of social membership always precedes the question of tolerance, and that the logic of Augustine's largely ignored account of the virtue emerges against the backdrop of these findings from the second, third, and fourth centuries. Compel them in and then tolerate them: In some perverse way, this might make sense after all.
75. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Aristotle Papanikolaou Liberating Eros: Confession and Desire
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
THE BASIC THESIS OF THIS ESSAY IS THAT CONFESSION—DEFINED AS ACTS of truth-telling about that which one most fears to speak—affects the landscape of one's emotions and desires. How such acts of confession affect emotions and desires depends on where and to whom such a confession is spoken. The kind of effect confession will have on emotions and desires is determined, in part, by the identity of the listener (or the absence of one). Thus, the listener is not neutral in such acts of confession but assumes, de facto, a symbolic or iconic mediating role. I explore this relationship between confession and desire through an analysis of the Sacrament of Confession and in conversation with Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum. I suggest an alternative understanding of the Sacrament of Confession that defines the Sacrament not in juridical terms but as an event whose purpose is to increase one's desire for God. Although I affirm the constitutive role of language and interpretation on desires and emotions, I argue that Taylor and Nussbaum give insufficient attention to how desire affects interpretation and to how the particular iconic role of the listener affects how confession affects emotions and desires.
76. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Tobias Winright Just Cause and Preemptive Strikes in the War on Terrorism: Insights from a Just-Policing Perspective
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
ETHICISTS HAVE CRITICIZED THE GEORGE W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S INvocation of "war" language as a response to the threat of terrorism in the post—September 11, 2001, world. Calling instead for a "police" model, these ethicists are found among both the pacifist and the just war traditions. This essay explores what a policing model might entail. First, it highlights some expressions of interest by just war ethicists in a police approach for tackling terrorism. Second, it critically surveys some representative examples of pacifist appeals to such a paradigm. Third, it evaluates the call for a just-policing approach, showing how this model actually remains consonant with just war reasoning. Finally, the essay draws on the discipline of police ethics and examines what just cause, especially with respect to preemptive strikes, might look like in a just-policing approach to dealing with terrorism.
77. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
James T. Bretzke A Burden of Means: Interpreting Recent Catholic Magisterial Teaching on End-of-Life Issues
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
THIS ESSAY FIRST PRESENTS GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR INTERPRETING magisterial documents using Lumen gentium's triple criteria of considering the character, manner, and frequency of magisterial teaching in order to better determine its relative authority and weight. Next, these criteria are applied to a close reading of Pope John Paul Il's various documents that deal with end-of-life issues, especially his controversial March 2004 address to the participants in the International Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas. This analysis concludes that the pope did not in fact assert that artificial hydration and nutrition had to be used in virtually every medical case, such as patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state.
78. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Elizabeth M. Bucar Speaking of Motherhood: The Epideictic Rhetoric of John Paul II and Ayatollah Khomeini
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
IN THIS ESSAY, I PROPOSE A DISTINCT APPROACH TO ETHICS—COMPARAtive rhetoric—that attempts to analyze moral discourse at the intratradition and intertradition levels. Drawing on Aristotle's classification of modes of rhetoric, I demonstrate how the epideictic mode helps conceptualize moral discourse as attempting to convince and motivate through persuasion, even as it assumes as audience of adherence. I then elaborate a method of technical rhetorical analysis, drawing on the work of Stephen Toulmin and Chiam Perelman. This method is applied to two short rhetorical performances of John Paul II and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, focusing on motherhood. I conclude by briefly considering women's responses to clerical rhetoric.
79. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Jonathan Rothchild Moral Consensus, the Rule of Law, and the Practice of Torture
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
THIS ESSAY ARGUES AGAINST LEGAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHICAL JUSTIFICAtions for torture. In the expository sections of the essay, I juxtapose international prohibitions against torture with the current U.S. administration's justifications for harsh interrogation methods on the basis of military necessity and presidential prerogative. I examine the systematic and individual causes of the specific abuses at Abu Ghraib that were tantamount to torture. In the constructive sections of the essay, I retrieve the evolving standards of decency from Supreme Court cases and jus cogens peremptory norms from international law. I contend that torture is deontologically wrong and that the administration's arguments on solely teleological grounds are ethically flawed and contradictory. Engaging numerous interlocutors in law, philosophy, and Christian ethics, I reconceptualize the rule of law in terms of moral vision and an emerging moral consensus, and I hold that these terms provide a more adequate framework for evaluating and repudiating the practice of torture.
80. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Jean Porter Christian Ethics and the Concept of Morality: A Historical Inquiry
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
A COMPARISON OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD in the early Scholastic period with our contemporary understanding reveals both similarities and differences on a number of central points. Tracking these resemblances and divergences helps us to see how our conception of morality is the product of specific historical and social forces and that critical appraisal of this conception from the point of view of Christian ethics is both possible and desirable.