Vision and Virtue

Stanley Hauerwas

Description

“In describing Hauerwas’ work as Christian ethics, one can allow that phrase its full scope of meaning. It is the work of an ethician who is thoroughly conversant with that branch of philosophy and comes to grips with its major issues. He is also firmly committed to the view that, in modifying the substantive ‘ethics’ with the adjective ‘Christian,’ one is designating a distinct reality. . . . Hauerwas invites us to share an understanding of ethics in general and of Christian ethics in particular that is a great deal subtler and more complicated than most currently popular versions of those subjects. For contemporary Christian ethics to accept his invitation will mean letting itself in for some very rigorous and versatile thinking.” —America

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Christian Living
• Social Issues
• contemporary
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Ethics
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 avril 1981
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268088170
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

�says in Chri
Ethical Re(lectio Vision and Virtue Vsion and Vrtue
ESSAYS IN
CHRISTIAN ETHICAL REFLECTION
Stanle Hauerwas y
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana University of Notre Dame Press edition 1981
Copyright © 1974 by Fides Publishers, Inc.
Reprinted by arrangement with Fides Publishers, Inc.
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Dat�
Hauerwas, Stanley,
1940Vision and virtue.
Reprint of the ed. published by Fides, Notre Dame, Ind.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Christian ethics-Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title.
BJ1241.H38 241 80-54877
ISBN 0-268-01921-5 0-268-01922-3 pbk.
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third party
vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are
encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
ANE AND AAM Preface
I have brought these essays together in the hope they will
prove to be useful for classes in Christian ethics. These essays
develop a perspective that has been sadly lacking in much of
recent Christian ethics. I wish, however, to make no exaggerated
claims for the importance of this book as it is incomplete in
many ways. Important issues concerning the nature of obliga­
tion, justification, and value theory are only hinted at or
ignored entirely. My hope is, however, that these essays will
serve to introduce students to Christian ethics in a manner that
makes clear that Christian ethics is a disciplined and serious
business. Much I have done here may be wrong, but I hope I
have done it in a way that others can learn how to do Christian
ethics better than I have.
There are many people that have helped in the preparation of
one or more of these essays. I wish particularly to thank Ross
Paulson, Frank DeGrave, Jill Whitney, Donald Evans, Mary Jo
Weaver, Leroy Walters, James Gustafson, Hal Moore, James
Burtchaell, and Elena Malits for their patience in trying to help
me think and write better. I would also like to thank the
Department of Theology at Notre Dame and the Kennedy
Center for Bioethics at Georgetown University for the support
of the sabbatical during which this book was prepared.
There are six people that I owe a very special debt. I am
grateful to Dr. John Score, my teacher at Southwestern Univer­
sity, for first suggesting to me that it might be useful to bring
these essays together. I owe him much more than this as he
taught me the difference between being smart and being wise by
steadfastly refusing to be more than an honest man. Rev. David
Burrell, the chairman of my department, has often taken the
time from his busy schedule to read and criticize my work. His
leadership is one of the main reasons it is such a joy for me to
teach at Notre Dame. Dr. David Harned has given me confi­
dence that some of this may be worthwhile by suggesting that
Vll vm VISION AND VIRTUE
my work has been important for his own. His own book, Faith
and Vrtue, is so good it is a source of satisfaction to know that
my work may have influenced him in some way. Over the time I
have written these essays, and before as a fellow student, Dr.
Jim Childress has been my good critic, provided encouragement
when there were few others, and most of all has been my fiend.
He has had to carry the burden of reading more of my work of
anyone and what is good about it owes much to him. It finally
makes no sense to speak of debts between fiends for friendship
is the gift to rejoice in the presence of the other because of their
independence for our being. I am extremely grateful I can call
all these men my friends.
However my most important friends have been my wife,
Anne, and my son, Adam. Together they have taught me most
of what I have learned about what makes life worthwhile and
joyful. They are gifts I cannot possess and are all the more
valuable because of it. I thank God for them.
Stanley Hauerwas
September, 1973
Notre Dame, Indiana
Acknowledgements
The author and publisher are grateful to the following for
permission to reprint:
Iish Teological Quarterly for "Situation Ethics, Moral No­
tions, and Moral Theology";
Studies in Religion/Sciences Relzgieuses for "The Significance
of Vision: Toward an Esthetic Ethic";
Teological Studies for "Towards an Ethics of Character";
Journal of Religious Ethics for "The Self as Story: A Recon­
sideration of the Relation of Religion and Morality from the
Agent's Perspective";
Cross Currents for "Love's Not All You Need," "Abortion and
Normative Ethics," and "Politics, Vision, and the Common
Good";
Te American Ecclesistial Review for "Abortion: The Agent's
Perspective";
Joural of Relig£ous Studies (India) for "The Nonresistant
Church: The Theological Ethics of John Howard Yoder";
The Murphy Center for Liturgical Research, University of Notre
Dame, for "The Ethics of Death: Letting Die or Putting to
Death," to be published in Te Liturg of Hali and Death. PREFACE lX
Religious Education and Theolog Digest (edited version) for
"Asian and the New Morality";
Notre Dame Magazine for "The Christian, Society, and the
Weak," and to Theolog Today for its edited version entitled
"The Christian Care of the Retarded";
Review of Politzcs for "Theology and the New American Cul­
ture," and to Ronald Weber and the University of Notre
Dame Press for this article's inclusion in the collection of
essays entitled America in Change, University of Notre Dame
Press, 1972. Contents
Introduction 1
I. Theoretical and Methodological Issues
1. Situation Ethics, Moral Notions, and
Moral Theology 11
2. The Significance of Vision: Toward an
Aesthetic Ethic 30
3. Toward an Ethics of Character 48
4. The Self as Story: A Reconsideration of
the Relation of Religion and Morality from
the Agent's Perspective 68
II. The New Morality and Normative Ethics
5. Asian and the New Morality 93
6. Love's Not All You Need 111
7. Abortion and Normative Ethics 127
8. Abortion: The Agent's Perspective 14 7
9. The Ethics of Death: Letting Die or Putting
166 to Death?
10. The Christian, Society and the Weak: A
Meditation on the Care of the Retarded 187
III. Vision and Society
11. The Nonresistant Church: The Theological
Ethics of John Howard Yoder 197
12. Politics, Vision, and the Common Good 222
13. Theology and the New American Culture 241
Index 261 Introduction
The central intention and unifying focus of these essays is the
attempt to do responsible and constructive Christian ethical
reflection. There would be nothing remarkable about this ex­
cept that for many the idea of trying to do Christian ethics has
become a doubtfl enterprise. Philosophical, theological, and
sociological reasons have come together to make problematic
the idea that Christian ethics is anything distinct from ethics.
Some philosophers for logical reasons hae denied that there
can be any conceptual relation between religion and morality.
Some theologians, embarrassed by the narrow and dogmatic
forms of some kinds of Christian ethics in the past, and im­
pressed by the loss of vitaity of basic Christian symbols for
"modern man," are attempting to work from what they con­
sider to be a broader and more open perspective. Moreover,
Christian ethics has become something of an academic embar­
rassment in departments of religion that teach students of
varied religious and nonreligious backgrounds.
This book does not pretend to meet all the objections that
might be raised against Christian ethics. Rather, in the first part
of this book, I try to develop in a positive way the methodologi­
cal basis that makes intelligible the kinds of claims Christians
do, might, or should want to make about the nature of the
Christian moral life. The rest of the book attempts to show the
implications of this methodology for some of the issues raised
by the "new morality," concrete normative issues, and social
ethics. Methodologically, it is my contention that the current
difficulty of Christian ethics stems from the far too narrow
conception of moral experience accepted by many philosophi­
cal and religious ethicists. When ethics is limited to an analysis
of the justification for particula actions, then it is indeed
difficult to make sense of Christian ethics. The language of the
Gospel includes, but points beyond, judgments about particular
actions and practices to the nature of the self and how it is
formed for our life project.
1 g
2 VISION AND VIRTUE
Once ethics is focused on the nature and moral determination
of the self, vision and virtue again become morally signifcant
categories. We are as we come to see and as that seeing becomes
enduring in our intentionality. We do not come to see, however,
just by looking but by training our vision through the meta­
phors and symbols that constitute our central convictions. How
we come to see therefore is a function of how we come to be
since our seeing necessarily is determined by how our basic
images are embodied by the self-i.e., in our character. Christian
ethics is the conceptual discipline that analyzes and imaginative­
ly tests the images most appropriate to score the Christian life
in accordance with the central conviction that the world has
been redeemed by the work and person of Christ.
I have tried to arrange these essays in a way that makes clear
the development of this central theme. The first essay, "Situa­
tion Ethics, Moral Notions, and Theological Ethics," shows the
significance of directing attention to moral notions rather than
decisions. The kind of ambi ity in our moral experience that
lends credibility to situation ethics is better accounted for by
recognizing the open character of many of our moral notions.
The mora life is not first a life of choice-decision is not
king-but is rather woven from the notions that we use to see
and form the situations we confront. Moral life involves learning
to see the wor