On Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo‐Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross‐pollination from a variety of disciplines is a strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today.     

Catholic Feminist Ethics Reconsidered

Taking Catholic sexual ethics and liberal feminist ethics as points of departure, this essay argues that both frameworks are ill‐prepared to deal with the moral problems raised by sex trafficking: while Catholic sexual ethics is grounded in a normative understanding of sexuality, liberal feminist ethics argues for women's sexual autonomy, resting upon freedom of action and consent. From a perspective that attends both to the phenomenological interpretation of embodied selves and the Kantian normative interpretation of dignity, it becomes possible to critique both the Catholic and the liberal feminist frameworks of ethics. I argue that Catholic sexual ethics requires a reconceptualization as social ethics in order to meet the challenges of our present time, but that the shift is possible without giving up the moral imperatives of both Catholic and feminist ethics to protect human dignity and women's rights.     

Christian Ethics,Religious Ethics,and Secular Ethics: A Contemporary Reappraisal

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular-religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise.     

Ethnography and Jewish Ethics

This essay offers a Jewish approach to ethnography in religious ethics. Following the work of other ethnographers working in religious ethics, I explore how an ethnographic account of reproductive ethics among Haredi (ultra‐Orthodox) Jewish women in Jerusalem enhances and improves Jewish ethical discourse. I argue that ethnography should become an integral part of Jewish ethics for three reasons. First, with a contextual approach to guidance and application of law and norms, an ethnographic approach to Jewish ethics parallels the way ethical decisions are made on a daily basis in Jewish communities. Second, ethnography bolsters the voices of those involved in ethical discourse. Third, ethnography facilitates the bridge between local ethical questions and global ethical discourse.     

论宗教伦理的世俗性与超越性

宗教伦理有世俗性和超越性两方面。宗教伦理的世俗性,是宗教处理人与人之间的现实联系,使人有序安定地生活在人世间,能够信仰宗教和实践宗教的基础;宗教伦理的超越性,是宗教倡导信仰者要超越自我而与神的规范、教诲相联系,超越人的现实性而与神的永恒性相联系,超越现实世界而与神的彼岸世界相联系。世俗性和超越性是宗教伦理作用于信众的重要特征。     

宗教伦理学研究的意义、现状与展望

在理论上,宗教伦理学研究有利于伦理学与宗教学的学科发展;在实践上,宗教伦理学研究有利于宗教对话与人类道德困境的解决,有利于我国的道德建设,并有利于宗教本身的健康发展。近些年来,在佛教伦理学、基督教伦理学、伊斯兰教伦理学以及基于宗教对话的世界伦理构想等几个领域都取得了丰硕的成果,但宗教伦理学的学科建设还未完全成型,其研究视野略显狭小,这些都有待拓展、完善。     

COVID-19 and Religious Ethics

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.     

Between Christian Ethics and Religious Ethics

By focusing on questions concerning what kind of training graduate students in theology and ethics and religious ethics should receive, I try to initiate a conversation we need to have about the kind of work the JRE should foster.     

The Innocuous Legacy of Christian Ethics in Comparative Religious Ethics

I argue that even if the influence of Christian ethics on comparative religious ethics (CRE) is inevitable, it need not be problematic. The legacy would only be worrisome if it stacked the deck in favor of Christian ethics or predisposed comparative ethicists to conform to the methods or thematic concerns of Christian ethics. Following Gadamer, I suggest that the ideal of presuppositionless objectivity is an illusion that applies to not only those who emerge from a Christian cultural context but in every global context. Given the specific historical and cultural contexts of the emergence of CRE, the residue of Christian ethics in CRE is understandable and expected. Thus, the legacy of Christian ethics in CRE will only be problematic to the extent that the potential dangers of Christian hegemony remain hidden, which does not seem to be the case in the contemporary academic context.     

The Ethics of Visual Culture

To introduce this set of essays on visual ethics, I address the conceptual and methodological contours, as well as difficult theoretical questions, that might emerge with a visual turn in religious ethics. In addition I situate the work represented in this focus issue within ongoing conversations about moral perception, culture as a topic of normative analysis, and the various roles of visual culture in the moral life.     

Teaching Comparative Religious Ethics: A Review Essay

Though others have surveyed the different methods in comparative religious ethics, relatively little attention has been given to different approaches to pedagogy (exceptions include Lovin and Reynolds; Juergensmeyer; Twiss). The field of comparative religious ethics has now reached a level of maturity so that there are a variety of ways such courses can be taught. In this review I consider the approaches to comparative religious ethics found in four recent texts by Jacob Neusner, Darrell Fasching and Dell deChant, Regina Wolfe and Christine Gudorf, and Sumner Twiss and Bruce Grelle. In the essay I note the strengths and weaknesses of each text, with special attention given to how the texts might work in the classroom. I then argue that the different texts reflect different understandings of the goal of teaching comparative religious ethics, and I make these goals explicit in order to help teachers decide how they might approach the teaching in this growing field.     

Religious Ethics and the Environment

This essay discusses three recent books which each offer an integrative account of religious ethics and the environment. Religious environmental ethics is an area of inquiry within the larger field of religion and ecology. After a narrative that contextualizes the development of religious environmental ethics in relation to the environmental social movement, I describe the formation of the field including its focus on worldview, the “cosmological turn,” and its engagement with science, the “cosmic turn.” Elizabeth Johnson exemplifies the cosmic turn by developing a Christian theology of life in nature which explicitly accepts Darwin's theory of evolution. Willis Jenkins advocates a prophetic pragmatism and critiques a focus on worldview that is abstracted from practice and defers moral responsibility. Larry Rasmussen joins analysis of worldview with reflection on cross‐cultural resources for “anticipatory communities” of moral formation to catalyze change. I argue with Rasmussen that religious environmental ethics needs multiple approaches and should allow room for methodological pluralism.     

Exemplarist Environmental Ethics

This article argues that environmental ethics can deemphasize environmental problem‐solving in preference for a more exemplarist mode. This mode will renarrate what we admire in those we have long admired, in order to make them resonate with contemporary ethical needs. First, I outline a method problem that arose for me in ethnographic fieldwork, a problem that I call, far too reductively, “solution thinking.” Second, I relate that method problem to movements against “quandary ethics” in ethical theory more broadly. Third, I discuss some interpretive work I am engaged in about Henry David Thoreau and how it bears on the methodological issues my fieldwork raised. I argue that some of the most important icons of right relation to environment, especially Francis of Assisi and Thoreau, should be envisioned as far more politically invested than they usually are. They demonstrate to scholars of religious ethics that an exemplarist ethic focused on character need not neglect politics.     

Comparative Religious Ethics and the Politics of Christian Identity

I present a brief historical narrative of the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE) that attempts to make sense of the tensions within the field from the perspective of the politics of identity with reference to its changing content and practices—its internal history—and what might be called the background conditions—its external history—that shaped not only the content and methods of CRE but also its self‐understanding. Given the politics of Christian identity and the historical development of religious ethics within the American academy, I recommend that scholars of CRE adopt a more confessional mode of inquiry that makes explicit their ultimate commitments.     

Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics

How has engineering ethics addressed gender concerns to date? How have the ideas of feminist philosophers and feminist ethicists made their way into engineering ethics? What might an explicitly feminist engineering ethics look like? This paper reviews some major themes in feminist ethics and then considers three areas in which these themes have been taken up in engineering ethics to date. First, Caroline Whitbeck’s work in engineering ethics integrates considerations from her own earlier writings and those of other feminist philosophers, but does not use the feminist label. Second, efforts to incorporate the Ethic of Care and principles of Social Justice into engineering have drawn on feminist scholarship and principles, but these commitments can be lost in translation to the broader engineering community. Third, the film Henry’s Daughters brings gender considerations into the mainstream of engineering ethics, but does not draw on feminist ethics per se; despite the best intentions in broaching a difficult subject, the film unfortunately does more harm than good when it comes to sexual harassment education. I seek not only to make the case that engineers should pay attention to feminist ethics and engineering ethicists make more use of feminist ethics traditions in the field, but also to provide some avenues for how to approach integrating feminist ethics in engineering. The literature review and analysis of the three examples point to future work for further developing what might be called feminist engineering ethics.     

Ethics Naturalized: Feminism's Contribution to Moral Epistemology

A survey of Western feminist ethics over the past thirty years reveals considerable diversity; nonetheless, much recent work in this area is characterized by its adoption of a naturalistic approach. Such an approach is similar to that found in contemporary naturalized epistemology and philosophy of science, yet feminist naturalism has a unique focus. This paper explains what feminist naturalism can contribute to moral philosophy, both by critiquing moral concepts that obscure or rationalize women's subordination and by paying attention to real-life practices of moral inquiry, including those used by women.     

Ethnography and Subjectivity in Comparative Religious Ethics

The ethnographic turn in religious studies has responded to important developments, such as the rejection of value neutrality and the need to better address the lived experience of individuals and communities. In this essay, I affirm the value of ethnography as a method in comparative religious ethics, but distinguish between two ways of framing ethnography in relation to ethics. The first way insists on the hard limits of translating values across cultures, and tends to marginalize or dismiss normative inquiry. The second way allows for the interpretation of practices of ethical justification in diverse cultural contexts. I argue that this second category of ethnography is more congenial to the work of comparative religious ethicists, since an integral part of ethical inquiry involves reflecting on, and making arguments about, social norms and practices.     

AFTER LYNN WHITE: RELIGIOUS ETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

The fields of environmental ethics and of religion and ecology have been shaped by Lynn White Jr.'s thesis that the roots of ecological crisis lie in religious cosmology. Independent critical movements in both fields, however, now question this methodological legacy and argue for alternative ways of inquiry. For religious ethics, the twin controversies cast doubt on prevailing ways of connecting environmental problems to religious deliberations because the criticisms raise questions about what counts as an environmental problem, how religious traditions change, and whether ethicists should approach problems and traditions with reformist commitments. This article examines the critiques of White's legacy and presents a pluralist alternative that focuses religious ethics on the contextual strategies produced by moral communities as they confront environmental problems.