Christian Ethics has been far too concerned with ethical decision-making. It would seem that both the advocates of ‘situation ethics’, with their ever more outlandish paradigms, and the proponents of traditional moral theology, with their carefully qualified abstract deliberations, have focused too narrowly upon the individual faced with a moral choice. This collection of essays comes as a much needed change. Whereas others have bemoaned the state of Christian ethics today, Hauerwas has attempted to work out a serious alternative to the situationists and to the traditional moral theologians.
The book is divided into three parts. The first, and perhaps most important, deals with theoretical and methodological issues. The second, under the title ‘the new morality and normative ethics’, applies his method to a number of areas of individual morality, such as abortion and euthanasia. The third tackles certain problems in social ethics, namely the non-resistant church, politics and American culture.
A propos de l’auteur
Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University. He is the author of many books, including Suffering Presence (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), Vision and Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), and is co-author of Christians Among the Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). His book A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), was selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century.