Virtue, Catholic, and Feminist Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Feminist Care Ethics

The theories highlighted in this chapter—virtue ethics, feminist ethics, Roman Catholic social thought, and liberation theology—are driven by substantive, normative claims about the good and ways to achieve it. They also all share a social view of human nature and a conviction that ethics is integrated with other parts of life, not an isolated sphere of decision-making. The chapter begins with virtue ethics, including its Aristotelian roots and several contemporary interpreters. It then turns to feminist care ethics, which makes emotions, relationships, and practices crucial to defining the good. Finally, the chapter looks at Catholic ethics, including liberation theology, which insists that in their practices, people may share in the divine process of creation and perhaps even help build the reign of God. In different ways, these models all challenge the idealist, rationalist, and individualist emphases of mainstream ethics.

Property and Justice in the Modern Encyclical Literature

1990 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Andrew Lustig
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
The Common

In Catholic social thought since the time of Leo XIII, two important developments have influenced justificatory arguments for the institution of property. First, the traditional language of the “common good” has been augmented by an emphasis in recent encyclicals upon the dignity of persons and the rights of individuals. I shall analyze the warrants for this shift in formulation to see how changes in the language of justification reveal both continuities and discontinuities with the earlier tradition. Second, in the past century of Roman Catholic social thought, understandings of natural law have been subject to significant revision. Especially since the time of John XXIII, the papal encyclicals have sought both to “historicize” and to update those elements in the traditional discussion of property that fail to reflect modern socioeconomic circumstances. In reviewing the recent encyclical literature on these themes, I will consider how, or whether, earlier discussion can be successfully modernized without undercutting the raison d'etre of natural-law terminology in the process.

Towards an Existential and Emancipatory Ethic of Technology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Ess
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Do So ◽  
Meaningful Lives

The Epic of Gilgamesh introduces existential themes of confronting our mortality and creating meaningful lives as embodied beings and relational autonomies. These entail care ethics, virtue ethics, deontological emphases on respect and equality, and overcoming destructive dualisms (mind/body, male/female, (human) nature/technology). The philosophical and theological origins of modern technology and the Enlightenment extend these starting points by emphasizing emancipation. Avoiding another set of dualisms (e.g., Enlightenment vs. Romanticism) offers richer understandings of emancipation, ethics, and our human/technology/nature relationships. Contemporary existentialism and virtue ethics further expand these understandings. Shannon Vallor’s “techno-moral virtues” specifically include courage. Gilgamesh and the woman in the Garden show how courage in resisting and disobeying authority emancipates us to embrace our mortality and take responsibility for meaning in our lives. This chapter closes with some specific ways for how we might do so in the contemporary world.

Catholic Social Thought in an Age of Austerity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Free Markets

This chapter looks at recent Catholic social thought in the United States in the age of globalization and after the financial crisis of 2007–08, drawn from four schools of thought: progressive, neoconservative, liberationist, and communitarian. As an exponent of progressive Catholicism, Meghan J. Clark has promoted an interpretation of Catholic social teaching focused on human rights and solidarity, whereas Samuel Gregg has furthered the neoconservative perspective by promoting free markets and commerce. Illustrating the varieties of liberation theology in the United States, Christine Firer Hinze has reflected on economic life from a feminist perspective, while Mária Teresa Dávila draws on Latino/a theology. William T. Cavanaugh has offered a communitarian critique of globalization. The chapter concludes with a proposal for an organicist communitarian vision of economic life, guided by a theology of interruption rooted in the proclamation of the Gospel and open to dialogue with others.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

Virtues, Inclinations, and Oneness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Ivanhoe
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Virtuous Action

This chapter develops various implications of the oneness hypothesis when applied to theories of virtue, drawing on several claims that are closely related to the hypothesis. Many of the views introduced and defended are inspired by neo-Confucianism and so the chapter offers an example of constructive philosophy bridging cultures and traditions. It focuses on Foot’s theory, which holds that virtues correct excesses or deficiencies in human nature. The alternative maintains that vices often arise not from an excess or deficiency in motivation but from a mistaken conception of self, one that sees oneself as somehow more important than others. The chapter goes on to argue that such a view helps address the “self-centeredness objection” to virtue ethics and that the effortlessness, joy, and wholeheartedness that characterizes fully virtuous action are best conceived as a kind of spontaneity that affords a special feeling of happiness dubbed “metaphysical comfort.”

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