Social Ethics

2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elsbernd
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Economic Ethics ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

[The survey addresses recent publications in five areas: (1) foundational resources and approaches; (2) Catholic social thought; (3) faith and public life; (4) reconciliation and social conflict; and (5) environmental and economic ethics. Recurring issues include: praxis-based approaches, the common good and human rights, religion's role in public life, restorative justice, as well as attention to the marginalized.]

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.

Restored Public Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-180
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
The Common ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
The University ◽  
The Universe

When we live in the yes, public life in America will be rescued from despair. We know from the Hispanic community’s example that religious knowledge of our place in the universe is healthy. The yes functions similarly. At the personal level, the reader who answers Lonergan’s question with a yes will encounter celebration, gratitude, and, because we have not lived up to the direction of the universe, confession. The universe now offers correction that must be taken seriously, though not coercively or institutionally. The yes spreads through the cultural entity of cosmopolis, which will confront our nihilism. The disciplines and the university will be renewed by a new understanding of the unity of all subject matters. Each course of study, though different, is always of a universe that is on our side. Policy debates will consider the common good. Politics will be filled with meaning and be more generous.

Is the Common Good Obsolete?

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 261-270
Author(s):  
V. Bradley Lewis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Intermediate Goods ◽  
The West ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Christian Society

The idea of the common good has been a signature feature of Catholic social teaching and so of modern Catholic engagement in public affairs. It has recently been suggested that the notion is now obsolete due to changes in the culture and politics of the West. In keeping with this suggestion, some argue that Catholics should abandon it in favor of an appeal based on lower intermediate goods in a manner more related to Augustine’s engagement with the largely pagan culture of his time than to Aquinas’s categories tailored to an integrally Christian society. I argue that such a solution misreads aspects of the tradition and of the present political and cultural situation and I suggest some alternative grounds on which Catholic engagement with contemporary public life should proceed and that thinking again about the common good is a necessary part of such engagement.

Against Humanity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Dubal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Lord's Resistance Army ◽  
The Common ◽  
Lord’S Resistance Army

This book is not about crimes against humanity. Rather, it is an indictment of “humanity,” the concept that lies at the heart of human rights and humanitarian missions. Based on fieldwork in northern Uganda, this book brings readers inside the Lord’s Resistance Army, an insurgent group accused of rape, forced conscription of children, and inhumane acts of violence. The author talks with and learns from former rebels as they find meaning in wartime violence, politics, spirituality, and love—experiences that observers often place outside the boundaries of humanity. Rather than approaching the LRA as a set of possibilities, humanity looks at the LRA as a set of problems, as inhuman enemies needing reform. Humanity hegemonizes what counts as good in ways that are difficult to question or challenge. It relies on specific notions of the good—shaped in ideals of modern violence, technology, modernity, and reason, among others—in ways that do violence to the common good. What emerges from this ethnography is an unorthodox question—what would it mean to be “against humanity”? Against Humanity provocatively asks us how to honor life existing outside normative moralities. It challenges us to shift toward alternative, more radical approaches to humanitarian, political, medical, and other interventions, rooted in anti-humanism.

Empirical Foundations of the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Effective Path

What has social science learned about the common good? Would humanists even want to alter their definitions of the common good based on what social scientists say? In this volume, six social scientists—from economics, political science, sociology, and policy analysis—speak about what their disciplines have to contribute to discussions within Catholic social thought about the common good. None of those disciplines talks directly about “the common good”; but nearly all social scientists believe that their scientific work can help make the world a better place, and each social science does operate with some notion of human flourishing. Two theologians examine the insights of social science, including such challenging assertions that theology is overly irenic, that it does not appreciate unplanned order, and that it does not grasp how in some situations contention among self-interested nations and persons can be an effective path to the common good. In response, one theologian explicitly includes contention along with cooperation in his (altered) definition of the common good.

Beyond the Nations: The Expansion of the Common Good in Catholic Social Thought

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A Barbieri
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Made In

In recent years it has become increasingly common to speak of the international or global common good. It remains unclear, however, what political content attaches to this expression, and how it relates to more traditional conceptions of the common good rooted in the context of the polis or the nation-state. This article examines the ramifications of extending this time-honored concept to a transnational framework, focusing in particular on the evolving rhetoric of the political common good in Catholic social thought. The first part traces the emergence of the transnational common good in Catholic thinkers such as Maritain, Murray, and Messner, as well as in the encyclical tradition. The second part addresses, from the standpoint of political theory, problems of scope, structure, and application attending the expansion of the common good. The concluding section proposes a multilayered, heuristic interpretation of the common good organized around the notion of a “plurality of pluralisms.”When one speaks of the common good, it always makes sense to inquire: The common good of whom? How the common good is demarcated is a matter of no small moment for any claims that are made in its name. name. For these claims stumble as soon as it becomes clear that the good referred to is in fact shared by only some members of the assumed collectivity and not the rest; and they likewise falter if they are revealed to rest on an inappropriate delimitation of the collectivity at the expense of others who, for the purposes at hand, should rightfully be included.

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