Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection

by Stanley Hauerwas

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268019211
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	04/30/1981
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He is the author of Christians among the Virtues, In Good Company, A Community of Character, and Character and the Christian Life, all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a work that demands to be taken seriously as a constructive proposal for how one is to do and understand Christian Ethics."

The Review of Politics

"This is a work that demands to be taken seriously as a constructive proposal for how one is to do and understand Christian Ethics." —The Review of Politics

“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

From the Publisher