Mercy Triumphs over Judgement: Intrusive or Enabling Mercy?

Criminology and Public Theology ◽

10.1332/policypress/9781529207392.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 167-194

Author(s):

Richard Bourne

Keyword(s):

Restorative Justice ◽

Moral Agency ◽

Theological Anthropology ◽

Character Formation ◽

Moral Anthropology ◽

Hard Treatment ◽

Theological Critique ◽

Justice And Mercy

This chapter engages in a philosophical and theological critique of thinkers who construe justice and mercy as contradictory norms. It develops a theological account of restorative justice in which mercy is understood as the ‘operative condition’ enabling the pursuit of justice beyond mere retribution. It elaborates this through an account of the moral anthropology inherent in Christian accounts of penance which understand moral agency as a time-bound pursuit of character-formation. Justice is pursued not in meting out a measure of proportionate hard-treatment, but in the merciful gift of the ‘penitential time’ which may enable reform of character and action. It ends with a tentative account of sanctification, desire and desistence and suggests these aspects of theological anthropology might inform a critique of the criminogenic machine of consumerism.

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Rising from the ordinary: Virtue, the justice motif and moral change

Anthropological Theory ◽

10.1177/1463499620932058 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 146349962093205

Author(s):

Susanne Brandtstädter

Keyword(s):

Moral Agency ◽

Northern China ◽

The Other ◽

Moral Anthropology ◽

Moral Change ◽

Social Rule ◽

Ordinary Life ◽

Practical Principle ◽

Social Dynamic ◽

Chinese Peasant

Justice understood as a practical principle and virtue has remained an understudied subject in the anthropology of morality. Moral anthropology has explored the moral or ethical as a space of freedom and creativity, whereas justice has often been associated with rule-following or even the law. In contrast, my paper explores justice as a virtue whose social dynamic can initiate moral change in ordinary life. This virtue, as I understand it, comprises not only a disposition to conform to established norms but also a capacity to reformulate these in the pursuit of social justice. My ethnography of Chinese peasant lawyers’ moral agency suggests that their understanding of justice as an essentially social, rule-governed and outcome-oriented virtue can grant new insights into the dynamics of moral innovation that arise in ordinary life. The peasant lawyers of rural northern China pursue moral change through combining moral reasoning about justice with principled action for justice and the provision of benefits for victims of injustice. It is the concern with the consequences of principled action that distinguishes justice as a social virtue from the other virtues, and the justice motif from alternative drivers of social change.

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Elateres Motiva: From the Good Will to the Good Human Being

Kantian Review ◽

10.1017/s1369415413000174 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 413-437 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Inder Marwah

Keyword(s):

Moral Agency ◽

Division Of Labour ◽

Human Beings ◽

Moral Obligations ◽

Moral Law ◽

Moral Anthropology ◽

Moral Principles ◽

Kant's Ethics ◽

The Relationship

AbstractKant's ethics has long been bedevilled by a peculiar tension. While his practical philosophy describes the moral obligations incumbent on all free, rational beings, Kant also understands moral anthropology as addressing ‘helps and hindrances’ to our moral advancement. How are we to reconcile Kant'sCriticalaccount of a transcendentally free human will with hisdevelopmentalview of anthropology, history and education as assisting in our collective progress towards moral ends? I argue that Kant in fact distinguishes between theobjectivedetermination of moral principles andsubjectiveprocesses of moral acculturation developing human beings’ receptivity to the moral law. By differentiating subjective and objective dimensions of moral agency, I argue (1) that we better interpret the relationship between Kant's transcendental and anthropological accounts as a division of labour between principles of obligation and principles of volition, and so, as complementary rather than contradictory; and (2) that this counters the view of Kant's ethics as overly formalistic by recognizing his ‘empirical ethics’ as attending to the unsystematizable facets of a properly human moral life.

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The theological anthropology of Simon Maimela: Democratisation of power and being human in relationship

Verbum et Ecclesia ◽

10.4102/ve.v38i1.1682 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

Author(s):

George J. Van Wyngaard

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Theological Anthropology ◽

Modern Human ◽

Black Theology ◽

Systematic Theology ◽

Race And Racism ◽

African Theology ◽

African Black ◽

Theological Critique ◽

Dominant Narratives

The lacuna around race in (white) Christian theological anthropology has often been pointed out. The canon of academic systematic theology seldom reflects on the implication of modern race and racism for our theological anthropologies and, therefore, fails to provide adequate resources for dealing with one of the most fundamental problems of modern theological anthropology � that the modern human was conceived through a white racial lens. Black theology, in its various streams, has responded with a theological anthropology that consciously disrupted a modern anthropology which thought of �man� as white (and male). This article analyses the sustained work around theological anthropology of South African Black Theologian Simon Maimela. Maimela over a number of years attempted to articulate the theological problem of white anthropology, or the anthropological problem of white theology, in South Africa. Two dominant pillars are identified in Maimela�s theological anthropology and these are connected to the influence of Black theology and African theology on his work, and his attempt at drawing these traditions together. Maimela�s theological critique on whiteness will be discussed and key contemporary implications noted.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: While the article is most explicitly situated in the discipline of systematic theology, it challenges dominant narratives on what the theological problem with apartheid was, which also has implications for the broader fields of whiteness studies and critical race studies in South Africa.

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Freedom, Responsibility, and Moral Agency

The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.23 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 305-320

Author(s):

Gerald McKenny

Keyword(s):

Basic Principle ◽

Moral Agency ◽

Theological Anthropology ◽

Social Ethics ◽

Christian Ethics ◽

The Other

The concepts of freedom, responsibility, and moral agency are tightly interwoven in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thought and have to do with the relation of subject to the other that is at the centre of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and theological anthropology. This chapter presents and critically examines these three concepts. It argues that Bonhoeffer’s key notion of responsibility for the other (that is, liability) is an important and permanent contribution to Christian ethics. It also argues that Bonhoeffer’s notions of the responsibility of the agent (that is, imputability) and the agent’s responsibility to the other (that is, accountability) are attenuated, to the detriment of his ethics. Finally, the chapter argues that Bonhoeffer’s treatment of vicarious representative action as an expression of responsibility for the other is more ambiguous and less suited to be a basic principle of social ethics than Bonhoeffer supposes.

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