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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This article analyzes the impact of postmodernism on the meaning, truth, and justification of claims in contemporary theology and ethics. It argues that historicist premises do not lead inexorably from a naïve objectivism in ethics to ethical relativism, as Sheila Greeve Davaney and Richard Rorty suggest. Instead, as the work of Carol Christ and Jeffrey Stout has argued, theologians and ethicists are justified in making indirect, web-of-belief related claims to ontological truth. Christ's theological realism and Stout's modest pragmatism both appear able to support meaningful discussions of truth, while avoiding the related dangers of relativism, skepticism, and nihilism. Paying careful attention to these methodological issues in a course on Religious Ethics and Moral Issues has proved very effective in overcoming student acquiescence to a relativist perspective, and in enabling them to propose and defend their own moral views with greater confidence.
1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Kaufman, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1966), 2.Google Scholar In what follows, I address ongoing, contemporary discussions of “critical realism.” Niebuhr, H. Richard in The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Collier, 1941)Google Scholar, and Lonergan, Bernard in Method and Theology (New York: Seabury, 1979)Google Scholar provide two subtle theological approaches to the issues involved.
2 In referring to historicism, I am relying on distinctions made by Dean, William in his History Making History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).Google Scholar As Dean explains, the “new” or “radical” historicism affirms the ultimacy of historical categories, arguing that there is not a deeper or more ideal truth beneath the events of social history. This form of historicism rejects all standard forms of foundationalism, realism, and the transcendentalized subject. Truths are nothing more than creations of history, products of what Dean calls the “creativity of the interpretative imagination.”
3 Nietzsche, , Beyond Good and Evil, 12, 13, 14, 16.Google Scholar
4 At all of these institutions except Brown University, the course was offered at an advanced level, and attracted primarily upper-class students. I think it is worth noting that my students, for the most part, are at a late stage in their educational careers and have not yet grappled seriously with the implications of ethical relativism, skepticism, and nihilism.
5 Nielsen, Kai, Ethics without God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1990).Google Scholar My students are assigned chaps. 2 and 4, “Morality and the Will of God” and “Religious and Secular Morality,” in which Nielsen argues that morality does not collapse without God as the ground or reason for acting morally. Nielsen makes his case with characteristic clarity.
6 Stout, Jeffrey, Ethics after Babel (Boston: Beacon, 1988), 13.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 13, 14.
8 Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 18.Google Scholar
9 Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), xxxv.Google Scholar
10 Reeder, John P. Jr., “Foundations without Foundationalism” in Outka, Gene and Reeder, John P. Jr., eds., Prospects for a Common Morality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 193.Google Scholar
11 Santurri, Edmund, “Nihilism Revisited,” Journal of Religion 71/1 (01 1991): 78.Google Scholar
12 See Davaney, Sheila Greeve, “Problems with Feminist Theory: Historicity and the Search for Sure Foundations” in Cooey, Paula M., Farmer, Sharon A., and Ross, Mary Ellen, eds., Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 79–95.Google Scholar See also Davaney, Sheila Greeve, ed., Theology at the End of Modernity (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991).Google Scholar Her “Introduction” to the collected essays is very instructive in these matters.
13 Davaney, , “Problems with Feminist Theory,” 83, 84.Google Scholar
14 Davaney, , ed., Theology at the End of Modernity, 2, 3.Google Scholar
15 Rorty, Richard, “Truth and Freedom: A Reply to Thomas McCarthy” in Outka, and Reeder, , eds., Prospects for a Common Morality, 279.Google Scholar
16 Ibid., 281.
17 Christ, Carol, “Embodied Thinking: Reflections on Feminist Theological Method,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5/1 (Spring 1989): 8.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., 13.
19 Ibid., 10-11.
20 Ibid., 13.
21 Ibid., 14-15.
22 Stout, , Ethics after Babel, 300, 297, 298.Google Scholar In his “Lexicon,” Stout defines Historicism in the good sense as “Acceptance of the historical contingency of one's vocabulary and styles of reasoning; the view that historical narratives of the right sort not only bring this contingency to light but also contribute to self-understanding; the only sort of historicism defended in The Flight from Authority.” He also defines anti-essentialism, in the good sense, as “the view that ‘essences,’ ‘concepts,’ and ‘natures,’ if they exist, can be known only by two means, namely: (1) empirical investigation of, or moral reflection upon, the objects to which the relevant terms apply and (2) the kinds of reflection on language found in works by Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Donald Davidson; not equivalent to the negative ontological thesis that ‘essences’ do not exist.” Stout fur-ther defines “Correspondence to reality (unfathomable sense),” or what I refer to as the “strong” sense as follows: “The relation between our true beliefs and things as they are in themselves, independent of our descriptions of them; a leading cause of mental cramps.” He goes on to define “Epistemological realism” as “The hopeless attempt to make correspondence to undescribed reality serve as a criterion or explanation of truth (hopeless because criteria and explanations need to place reality under a description if they are to serve any purpose whatsoever); the tendency to confuse the noncontroversial and unfathomable senses of ‘correspondence to reality.’” These definitions are crucial because the distinctions they draw have been misunderstood by some of Stout's interpreters and critics. His “good sense” and “bad sense” notions are often conflated.
23 Ibid., 250.
24 Stout, Jeffrey, “On Having a Morality in Common” in Outka, and Reeder, , eds., Prospects for a Common Morality, 230.Google Scholar
25 Stout, , Ethics after Babel, 244, 245.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., 253.
27 See West, Cornel, Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993), 31–58.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 50.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 52, 53. West borrows the notion of “evolutionary love” from Peirce, as he describes the pragmatic dialectic of working through the pervasive market culture to discern more truthful possibilities.
31 Ibid., 41; my emphasis.
32 See West's, “Jeffrey Stout's Ethics after Babel” in his Prophetic Thought, 175–78.Google Scholar
33 Stout, , “On Having a Morality in Common,” 230.Google Scholar
34 For example, although I regularly revise the list of required essays, my readings for the portion of the course on ethical issues surrounding death and dying are currently as follows: Karl Barth, “Respect for Life,” Stanley Hauerwas, “Rational Suicide and Reasons for Living,” John Paul II, “Euthanasia,” Lisa Sowle Cahill, “A ‘Natural Law’ Reconsideration of Euthanasia,” Gilbert Meilaender, “Euthanasia & Christian Vision,” Allan Verhey, “Integrity, Humility, and Heroism: May Patients Refuse Medical Treatment?” and Gloria Maxson, “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” These essays are all contained in Lammers, Stephen E. and Verhey, Allen, eds., On Moral Medicine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).Google Scholar In addition, I encourage students to read Rachels', James “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” The New England Journal of Medicine 292/2 (01 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Beauchamp's, Tom L. rejoinder, “A Reply to Rachels on Active and Passive Euthanasia” in Beauchamp, Tom L. and Perlin, Seymour, eds., Ethical Issues in Death and Dying (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 246–59Google Scholar, which are placed on the reserve reading list. These essays are read in conjunction with the showing of “The Dax Case,” a video account of the ethical dilemmas attending the case of burn victims. The essay question for this portion of the course asks students, in light of the readings, to propose and defend their own position on when, if at all, euthanasia or suicide would be morally permissible.