Vision and Virtue
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.
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.