Euthanasia, Human and Other

This chapter turns to one of the most important and controversial issues in medical ethics: euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). The intensely personal scale of mercy killing makes it possible to consider practice in a very concrete way, including activities that shape the situations of very ill people and their relations with a variety of other moral agents, from family members and physicians to policymakers. The chapter explores not only human euthanasia and PAS but also killings of nonhuman animals, including both the euthanasia of beloved pets and the killing of homeless dogs and cats in shelters. This comparison highlights the difference that relationships make in ethical arguments. It also reveals how much species runs through ethical argumentation, in the form of unquestioned assumptions about what makes a life valuable.

The Lives That Matter

This chapter examines the moral problems raised by the “campus tour” of white nationalist Richard Spencer. This provides a way to reflect on some of the issues raised in and by moral dilemmas as a strategy within ethical theory, including their helpfulness for addressing real-life challenges. It also shows the power of practice to put familiar moral dilemmas in a new light. In the case of Spencer, and hate speech generally, a practice-focused approach enables us to see beyond the tension between two competing values of racial equality and free speech. That familiar framing leaves out the lived experience of people who are concretely threatened by white supremacists, the actual practices of those supremacists, and the relationships and structures of the society in which both racists and their victims live.

Material Practice and Morality in the Marxist Tradition

This chapter examines Marxist thought, which is primarily a sociological rather than an ethical framework. However, both Karl Marx and later Marxist thinkers developed theories with clear moral assumptions and goals, from their anthropology to visions of a revolutionized society. Marxist thought makes “human sensuous activities” central to everything, and that has to include its (implicit) ethical theory. Even though Marx showed little interest in moral theory, both meta-ethical and normative claims run throughout his work. This chapter reflects special interest in Marx’s emphases on the role of material forces in shaping ideas and on the creative tensions between individuals and structures. To explore these issues, the chapter engages the thought of Marx and some of his recent interpreters to understand the ways all ideas, including ideas about value, are grounded in material practices, experiences, and structures.

Pragmatism and Ethics

This chapter looks at pragmatism, which conceives of a particular form of practice—problem-solving in concrete circumstances—as the core ethical task. Pragmatism has much to offer a practice-based ethics, beginning with its robust challenges to the static, idealist, and dualistic approach of dominant theories. Especially helpful is the pragmatist emphasis on open-ended, fallibilistic inquiry, which offers promising models for working around or through polarized ways of thinking about moral issues, which often prevent effective action. The chapter also highlights William James’s notion of cash value, which points to the meaning of moral ideas in real life, and John Dewey’s concept of ends-in-view, which challenges both linear models of action and the possibility of absolute, once-and-for-all goals.

Virtue, Catholic, and Feminist 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.

It’s the Thought That Counts

This chapter explores the primacy of ideas in dominant ethical theories, focusing on several influential religious and secular traditions: Lutheran Christianity, including its roots in the thought of both Paul and Augustine, and Kantian philosophy. Despite their differences, these models agree that the agent’s intentions are the key to moral evaluation; what makes a decision morally good or bad is in the actor’s head. Augustine and Luther, following Paul, frame this in terms of faith, will, and love, while Kantians emphasize decision-making processes, which must be completed prior to any actions. As a result of the priority placed on attitudes and intentions, all these models marginalize practice. This chapter, as throughout the book, compares religious and secular approaches, showing how they influence each other, historically and currently, and how neither alone can fully account for either academic or popular thinking about ethics.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter explores some of the features of a practice-based approach to ethical theory. It contends that rather than being isolated in one or another compartment or ignored completely, practice should be, and in fact is, integral to all aspects of ethical theory. Because dominant models do not and cannot take practice seriously, we cannot foreground practice within the usual theoretical confines. To understand practice, we have to reshape ethical theory, and vice versa. We will not find real alternatives unless we put practice front and center. Beginning with practice makes it possible to rethink our vision of ethics at the same time as it demands such a rethinking.

Ideas, Practices, and Climate Change

This chapter examines climate change, the most pressing environmental problem of our time. It focuses on the ways practice can help us think about key issues, such as the gap between values and practices, the ways economics and technologies shape moral attitudes and actions, and the problem of moral responsibility and consequences. It also considers the question of what individuals can and should do in response to a problem that is far too big for individual actions to fix. The vastness of climate change demands that both environmental and social ethicists rethink some common assumptions and develop innovative models for understanding and mitigating human effects on the natural world.

Religious Pacifism

This chapter argues that pacifism is not merely an applied ethic—a narrow approach to the particular moral problem of war—but rather a comprehensive ethical theory. The same is true of just war theory, the other main approach to the morality of war. The chapter looks at several pacifist traditions, beginning with the Radical Reformation or Anabaptist stream within Christianity. It also explores the pacifist thought of Martin Luther King Jr., who emphasized the relationship between means and ends, a theme that is also central to the thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Gandhi insisted that practices are not just tools for achieving predetermined goals, however, but shape the ways we conceive of those ends and of the possibilities and obstacles we face in achieving them. This offers a novel way of conceiving not just of means and ends but of ethics generally, in which practices are central from start to finish

Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to the main themes and arguments of the book. It briefly explains the lack of attention to practice in many influential religious and philosophical moral theories, including Kantian and certain Christian models, due to their focus on interior mental states as the source of value. The chapter introduces some key themes in the book’s challenge to this idealist approach and points to some of the alternative traditions, such as pragmatism, Marxism, and religious pacifism, which provide alternative understandings of the role of practice in ethics. The chapter also defines the book’s key terms, including practice, and explains the contributions of social ethics as a subfield within religious ethics. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the book’s organization.