Dialectics of Ethics

Philosophical and theological ethics in the Islamic tradition tend to be appraised on the basis of a unilateral perspective, which circumvents a moral rational approach to intuition. On this account, moral knowledge is expected to rest on intuitive judgments, which are universally accessible to human beings. Looking at moral ontology and epistemology in Arabic philosophy, I demonstrate that taking intuitionism as the only valid rational discourse to ethics needs to be challenged. In fact, Arabic philosophers do not subscribe to a realist view of the good and evil in relation to human actions, and rather admit a division between cosmic values in metaphysics and moral values in ethics. In so doing, they show how metaphysics ascribes a substantial view to good in existence and a negative theory to evil, while the science of ethics admits a teleological and relative view of the good. Overall, the falāsifa remain committed to Aristotle’s premise that ethics does not rely on abstraction and emphasized the role of experience too. But, they seem to be also attentive to the dialectical nature of Islamic jurisprudence in producing norms considering both principles of the law and its particular application. This is also clear in their epistemology of ethical judgments such as the maxim justice is good. While they ascribe a universal status to ethical maxims, they preclude from granting them an absolute status over the authority of norms construction. Instead, philosophers attribute a dialectical role to ethical maxims to guarantee both consensus over norms and the possibility to produce truthful opinions. Keywords: Moral ontology and epistemology, The problem of evil, The nature of the good, Moral values, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rushd, Legal epistemology, Written and unwritten laws, Ethical maxims, Widely-accepted premises (mashhūrāt), Reputable premises (maḥmūdāt).

Theological Ethics of Work in Modern Protestantism

Kostiantyn Teteriatnikov. Theological ethics of work in modern Protestantism. Dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Philosophical Studies, Specialty 09.00.14 – Theology. – National Pedagogical Dragomanov University of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. – Kyіv, 2021.

Is Presence Always Complicity? An Analysis of Presence, Its Moral Objects, and Scandal in Proximity to Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Catholic chaplains and clinicians who exercise their vocations in contexts wherein physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia (PAS-E) are legal may need to confront the difficult question of whether or not their presence in proximity to these acts and the processes that govern them is consistent with Catholic ethics. Debate on this question to date has focused on complicit presence and scandal. Drawing on Catholic theological ethics and the vision for end-of-life care espoused in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent letter, Samaritanus Bonus, I argue that some forms of presence in proximity to PAS-E are ethically justifiable. Core to this argument are the three elements of moral action: intention, object, and circumstance, alongside efforts to mitigate the risk of scandal informed by the teaching of Aquinas.

Appeal to Women’s Experience in Ethics: Lessons from Feminism and the Challenge from Postcolonial Critique

Appeal to women’s experience for moral delineation in theological ethics has been perplexed by the issue of cultural diversity and colonialism as raised by postcolonial critique. This paper aims to examine the debates from Third-World feminism and Christian feminism in dealing with difference and solidarity, leading to the call for contextual analysis and related power mappings. Margaret A. Farley’s proposal for sexual ethics in Just Love will then serve as an example to discuss how the search for common morality among cultural diversity may prevent or reinforce colonial agendas and other privileges.

Karl Barth's Moral Thought

Does theological ethics articulate moral norms with the assistance of moral philosophy? Or does it leave that task to moral philosophy alone while it describes a distinctively Christian way of acting or form of life? These questions lie at the heart of theological ethics as a discipline. Karl Barth’s theological ethics makes a strong case for the first alternative. This book follows Barth’s efforts to present God’s grace as a moral norm in his treatments of divine commands, moral reasoning, responsibility, and agency. It shows how Barth’s conviction that grace is the norm of human action generates problems for his ethics at nearly every turn, as it involves a moral good that confronts human beings from outside rather than perfecting them as the kind of creature they are. Yet it defends Barth’s insistence on the right of theology to articulate moral norms, and it shows how Barth may lead theological ethics to exercise that right in a more compelling way than he did.

Hearing God’s Command

When we claim that the command of God as a moral norm is rationally intelligible, we mean that it is in principle knowable, that we can reason about it, and that we can hold one another accountable to it. Barth’s theological ethics accommodates all three of these requisites. He holds that although we do not strictly know the specific action God will command, we have an approximate knowledge of it, and that in our asking it of God we stand in the space where it can be heard. He also holds that although our moral reasoning does not give us a definitive answer to what God requires and that we must bring our reasons before God’s ultimate verdict on them, the consideration of reasons for and against a proposed action or course of action is essential to hearing God’s command. Finally, he holds that human beings are bound to one another in relations of mutual speaking and hearing God’s commands, and these relations are at least implicitly relations of mutual accountability for what we hear as God’s command.

Divine Action and Human Action

Throughout his work, Barth is determined to consider human action in relation to divine action, and not in itself. This determination poses three questions. First, can Barth make human action intelligible as the agent’s own action? Second, does he leave human action unstable, lacking anything that secures its continuity throughout its engagements with divine action? Third, is the agent who encounters divine action a fully and genuinely human agent with the full range of agential capacities? Barth adequately answers all three questions, but it is unclear that he can answer any of them in a fully satisfactory way without the notion of habits as persistent tendencies of action. Without such a notion, Barth cannot account for morally good action as a persistent tendency enabled by grace—that is, as virtue. This limitation limits the plausibility of this theological ethics.