scholarly journals Moral Intuition, Social Sin, and Moral Vision: Attending to the Unconscious Dimensions of Morality and Igniting the Moral Imagination

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 292
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sweeny Block
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Intuition ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Vision ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Observable Actions ◽  
Future Work

This paper argues that the unconscious dimensions of the moral life—for example, moral vision, moral imagination, and distorted consciousness—are some of the most urgent provinces of moral theology today. Historically, moral theology was concerned with moral quandaries and observable actions, and moral agents were understood to be rational, deliberate, self-aware decision makers. Cultures of sin, such as racism and sexual violence, require that moral theologians reconceive of moral agency. Confronting these unconscious dimensions of the moral life requires integrating research in disciplines such as science, sociology, history, and anthropology with Christian ethics, pushing the boundaries of what has traditionally been understood to be the domain of moral theology. As an example, this paper draws upon the mutually reinforcing theories of moral intuition, developed by social and moral psychologists, and recent theories of social sin in Christian ethics, arguing that attention to the unconscious province of the moral life is necessary for developing an accurate conception of moral agency and for future work in moral formation. This paper concludes with a modest proposal for how stories might enable awareness of our distorted consciousness.

Back in Time: The Bildungsroman and the Source of Moral Agency

Good Form ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Jesse Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Moral Intuition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Miss Marjoribanks ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Sensus Communis ◽  
Physical Sensation

This chapter focuses on the Bildungsroman, studying the philosophical and literary significance of the novel of development. Through readings of Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks (1866), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, it suggests that the ethical foundations of the concept of Bildung—and in particular the idea of sensus communis (common sense)—made form in the Bildungsroman, lay the groundwork for one's own understanding of what makes a novel count as an object of study. The operating principle in the narrative structure of the Bildungsroman is the discovery that one is already a member of a community, and that one's decisions can be understood as stemming from that community. Proper cultivation means the development of a character that can understand and respond to the pre-existing, yet unconscious, shared consensus: the sensus communis. This sort of reciprocity between individual and community is actually a better description of how moral intuition worked, at its more refined levels, than references to physical sensation.

Culture and Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 52-73
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
Intercultural Research ◽  
Communicative Theories

The necessity for global ethics to guide international and intercultural research is by no means new phenomenon. In 1996, James Bretzke wrote about a then-growing appeal for global ethics, which led to a habitude of scholarly employment of hermeneutical and communicative theories that were thought to represent workable models for Christian ethics. The notion of morality has been subjected to descriptive references by socio-anthropologists when they report on the moral comportment of the societies they study. A descriptive explanation should suffice as a micro definition for the purpose of associating the notions of ethics and morality with the conduct of individuals on the basis of membership affiliation. A normative definition that is applicable to all humans would depict a macro or universal account. Gert and Gert specified that a condition of rationality is almost always a requirement for moral agency.

Moral sentiments

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Jay Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Enlightenment

Moral sentiments are those feelings or emotions central to moral agency. Aristotle treated sentiments as nonrational conditions, capable of being moulded into virtues through habituation. The moral sense theorists of the Enlightenment took sentiments to provide the psychological basis for our common moral life. Kantian approaches deny the primacy of sentiments in moral personality, and treat moral sentiments as conditioned by our rational grasp of moral principles. A central issue is whether moral sentiments incorporate moral beliefs. Accounts which affirm a connection with moral beliefs point to the complex intentionality (object-directedness) of such states as resentment or indignation. Against this, some observe that moral emotions may be felt inappropriately. Of special interest are the sentiments of guilt and shame. These seem to reflect different orientations towards moral norms, and questions arise about the degree to which these different orientations are culturally local, and whether either orientation is superior to the other.

Regret: A Vital Structure of Critical Engagement in Moral Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Alexander Keller Hirsch ◽  
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Counterfactual Thinking ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Moral Learning ◽  
Vital Structure

I argue that helping college students to hone their faculty for regret is key to at least three interrelated functions of critical engagement in moral education: 1) empathic unsettlement; 2) counterfactual thinking; and 3) anagnorisis, Aristotle’s term for a tragic and too-late turn in self-awareness. All three functions support an attitude of humility and self-reflection germane to rigorous moral reflection. Though it can be difficult to confront and assume, I argue that claiming regret can help students to catalyze thinking, curiosity, and responsiveness in ways that bear under-explored potential in moral learning. In what follows, I defend regret as a vital structure of moral life, and give several examples of how regret might work to advance moral imagination in the classroom.

scholarly journals The Goods of Human Sexuality: Ethics and Moral Theology

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Ellen Wondra
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Sexual Relationships ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Church

AbstractChristian ethics has always taken a complex view of the goods and purposes of human sexuality and its role in human relationships. Sexual desire and behavior have to be seen always within the overarching moral imperatives of love of God and love of neighbor. Such love entails self-giving and other-regard, and in longer-term relationships also some measure of commitment, fidelity, reciprocity or mutuality, truthfulness and generativity. Yet not all relationships with these characteristics do (or should) include sexual behavior. Nor do all sexual relationships include all these characteristics or virtues all the time. So we do better to base our moral evaluations of relationships on the exercise of these virtues than on more obvious criteria of sexual orientation or even status in the eyes of the church. At the same time, it is also possible for faithful and reasonable people to disagree faithfully and reasonably on sexual ethics, as on other things.

The Feminist Turn in Ethics

Horizons ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-347
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Social Ethics ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
History Of Ethics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Target ◽  
Political Science Education

Anyone who plies the noble art-science of social ethics (moral theology, Christian ethics), while taking no account of the feminist turn of consciousness, is open to charges of professional irresponsibility and incompetence. No. That is not an overstatement or an overblown rhetorical lead-in. The history of ethics is turning an epochal corner. To miss the turn is to be lost and useless.Feminism is concerned with the shift in roles and the question of the rights that have been unjustly denied women. But all of that, however important and even essential, is secondary. The main event is epistemological. Changes in what we know are normal; changes in how we know are revolutionary. Feminism is a challenge to the way we have gone about knowing. The epistemological terra firma of the recent past is rocking and as the event develops, it promises to change the face of the earth.The main impact of feminism will be felt in the area of moral knowledge. That, of course, is broader than ethics since all of the social sciences are heavy with moral assumptions and evaluations. Economics, politics (simplistically called political science), education, journalism, business administration, engineering, et al. are all intra-familial siblings of social ethics, although educational systems have treated them as separable strangers. (This mischievous separation, indeed, is a natural target of the emerging feminist consciousness.)

Philosophy, Theology, and Christian Virtue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Preliminary Discussion ◽  
Its Analysis

This chapter contains a preliminary discussion of the importance and centrality of humility for the Christian moral life, and examines some initial ways of understanding the nature of this virtue, including a discussion of the biblical term tapeinophrosune. This word can be translated as humility or lowliness of mind. There are different ways of understanding the nature of humility, i.e., there is controversy over what it is and what it requires of those who seek to exemplify this trait. The main focus of the chapter is an explanation and defense of analytic moral theology, the methodological approach the book takes in its analysis of the moral virtue of humility. This chapter argues that analytic moral theology can help to clarify the nature of humility in a way that is conducive to moral and spiritual formation, if it is done with these ends in mind.

Christian Ethics and Moral Theology, 1939–60—I

Theology ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 64 (487) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Ronald Preston
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Ethics
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