R170: Religion, Ethics, and Public Life
R376: Problems in Social Ethics
R365: Religion and the Self in Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Freud
R374/574 & R375/575: From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism I-II
R672/770: Religious Thought and Ethics
R672/770: Religion, Culture and Medical Ethics
R473/571: Contemporary Religious Ethics
R661/761 Religion and Social Criticism
Religion,
Ethics, and Public Life (R170)
Link to Syllabus (Spring, 2004)
This is an introductory undergraduate lecture course in religion and ethics, focusing on social responsibility and moral reasoning. Graduate students work in this course as Associate Instructors, leading discussion groups and evaluating student performance.
We begin by examining basic methods and tools in ethics, after which we study six topics: abortion; war and peace; death and dying in medicine; economic justice; discrimination; and environmental ethics. The chief goal of the course is to explore the complexity of these topics and to understand how religious thought, belief, and practice inform moral discussion in American public life today. Along the way, we ask whether individuals or groups have a responsibility to protect the interests of vulnerable, or “at-risk” populations: fetuses, political communities under attack, women in the economic and cultural marketplace, sick and dying patients, the poor, racial minorities, and nonhuman lives. These groups, and the issues that surround their needs, stand at the center of debates in public culture today – debates in newspaper articles, religious gatherings, political elections, professional meetings, evening talk shows, shop floor conversations, and family dinners. With each topic we examine different arguments and points of view. We close the semester by studying some religious themes that inform most of the readings, focusing on creation and covenant. Sources draw from Judaism, Christianity, and contemporary social thought.
Problems in Social Ethics (R376)
Link to R376 Syllabus
(Spring, 2005)
Topic: War and Peace in Western
Religion is course that explores fundamental
questions about killing and war, drawing on classical and contemporary sources
in western religion and ethics. Consider some questions:
When President Bush announced a war against terrorism in response to the attacks
of September 11, did he do the right thing? Were those who
planned and carried out the attacks outlaws who
should be captured and tried in a court of law, or warriors
who should be fought and killed? In the 1990s, President
Clinton sent ground troops to
This course helps us think about these questions in a
critical and comparative way. Drawing on Jewish, Christian,
Islamic, and secular sources, we study a wide range of perspectives, e.g., the
Bible, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Reinhold
Niebuhr, G.E.M.
Anscombe, the U.S.
Texts
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral
Argument with Historical Illustrations (2d or 3rd ed.)
Richard B. Miller, ed., War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological
Ethics
Richard B. Miller, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the
Just-War Tradition
John Kelsay, Islam and War: The Gulf War and
Beyond
Terry Nardin, The
Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives
A.J. Coates, The Ethics of War
James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare
Jean Bethke Elshtain,
Women and War
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God:
The Global Rise of Religious Violence
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of
Jesus
Reader (available at Collegiate Copies,
Religion
and the Self in Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Freud (R365/581)
Link to R365.581 Spring 2009) R581_Grad_supplement_readings
This course is about
religion, psychology, and the moral life. It focuses on the quality of
dispositions; our loves, fears, hatreds, and regrets; our sense of
responsibility to ourselves and others; our (anxious) awareness that we are
limited in body and time; and our attempt to craft a narrative of
self-understanding. In this way we will examine questions of self-knowledge,
religious experience, and the moral quality of the emotions.
We will ask, Is religion a source of psychic health, or an obstacle to it? What sorts of problems is religion meant to cure? What problems do religious beliefs create? How does religion bear on the self's loves, its past, its mortality, its doubts? We will also look at concrete actions, cultural practices, and religious institutions. Along the way we’ll ask whether it is possible to want to do evil, whether it is possible to love or grieve too much, what is meant by purity of heart, and whether we ought to love the dead. To focus our discussions, on occasion we’ll look at relationships with mothers and fathers, the emergence of mega-churches in the USA, eating ethnic fast food, and wearing “authentic NBA apparel.”
We will study these questions and cases through the works of Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Sigmund Freud. These authors examined how the self can be a problem to itself. They were strong poets of self-analysis who turned to religion to provide either a cure for or an explanation of the self's internal woes. Equally important, they believed that the path to truth was taken through self-examination. What we find as they take us along that path will be a central topic of this course. These authors also saw their ideas as having broader implications for cultural and social criticism. Their brilliant efforts to study the self’s longings, pathologies, cultural influences, and religious practices will be the focus of our readings and discussions.Texts
Augustine, Confessions
Augustine, The City of God (selections)
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing
Kierkegaard, A Literary Guide
Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity
Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Freud, The Ego and the Id
Freud, The Future of an Illusion
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Peter Brown: Augustine of Hippo: A Biography
John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought
Baptized
Ronald Green, Kant and Kierkegaard: The Hidden Debt
Ernst Wallwork, Psychoanalysis and Ethics
Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of a Moralist
Problems in Social Ethics: Virtue and Freedom (R571)
This graduate “piggyback” course focuses on two
fundamental ideas: the idea of developing moral character, or becoming a
virtuous person; and the idea that freedom is, in some way, fundamental to moral
action. What is the meaning of the good life?
How do we find out? On what must we rely to achieve
the good life once we have discovered its meaning? Must we
discover anything at all in order to act rightly? In
addressing these questions, we engage in close readings of five classical
authors in Western ethics: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and
Immanuel Kant.
The course takes the following general shape: After
examining three architects of the virtue tradition (Plato, Aristotle, and
Aquinas), we turn to two critiques of this legacy,
critiques developed from theological (Luther) and philosophical (Kant)
perspectives. Studying virtue and freedom opens up a wide
array of complex issues, e.g., the relation between self, society, and history;
the nature of moral responsibility; theories of human nature; the relation
between moral action and "happiness"; virtue and the problem of religious
self-righteousness; and the relation between religion and morality.
In addition to these primary sources, graduate students examine two recent
discussions of the virtues: Martha Nussbaum's discussion of the role of
vulnerability, contingency and tragedy in Greek ethics, and Alasdair
MacIntyre's effort to retrieve a theory of the
virtues in the wake of the alleged demise of Enlightenment morality.
Nussbaum's work is read in conjunction with Plato and Aristotle.
Five additional meetings are arranged to discuss
MacIntyre's work.
Texts
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Happiness; Treatise on the Virtues;
and supplementary materials, photocopied
Martin Luther, Selections From His Writings
(John Dillenberger, ed.)
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of
Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics
(recommended, except for the chapter on Kant)
From Christian Ethics to Social Criticism I
& II (R374/574 & 375/575)
Link to R374/574 Syllabus
(Fall 2005)
Link to R375/575 Syllabus (Spring 2006)
n.b. This course is a two semester survey of the history of Christian Ethics and religious social criticism. Though the course is designed with continuity between sections I and II, students are not required to take both courses.
This is a textual and contextual survey of the history of Christian ethics. It is designed to give an overview of major thinkers in key periods of Christianity and to acquaint students with different genres of ethical literature. The core argument underlying the course is that there is no single tradition of “Christian ethics.” Rather, “Christian ethics” comprises several subtraditions that overlap, interpenetrate, and argue with each other, other religious traditions, and cultural trends. Materials draw from biblical sources and early Christian writings, the patristic period, Augustine, Abelard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, radical reformers, Bartolomé de Las Casas, John Locke, Jonathan Edwards, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and recent currents in Christian ethics. In addition to these primary sources, we read Wayne Meeks's The Moral World of the Early Christians and pertinent sections of Ernst Troeltsch's The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches.
Texts
Bible
Ernst Troeltsch, The
Social Teachings of the
Wayne Meeks, The Moral World of the Early
Christians
Cyril Richardson, ed., Early Christian Fathers
Augustine, The City of
Abelard, Ethical Writings
Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Happiness and Treatise on the Virtues
Paul Sigmund, ed., Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics
John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther:
Selections from His Writings
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
George Williams, ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers
John Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True
Virtue
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love
Karl Barth, Church
Dogmatics, II/2, III/4 (excerpts)
Excerpted material from contemporary Protestant and Roman Catholic ethics
Religious
Thought and Ethics (R672/770; G620)
Topic: Religion, Justice, and Culture
Link to R672/770 Syllabus (Fall, 2006)
This graduate seminar addresses matters of religious commitment and cultural identity in recent debates about social justice and public philosophy. We examine these issues in light of liberal and communitarian theories of justice, and then turn to arguments from modern Judaism and Christianity that echo, challenge, or amend those theories. We close by examining feminist and multicultural contributions to recent debates about social justice.
Texts
John Rawls, A
Theory of Justice
John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 2d ed.
John Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," from
Collected Papers
Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of
Justice, 2d ed., & selected articles
Reinhold Niebuhr, The
Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of
Pluralism and Equality
Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition"
Susan Moller Okin,
Justice, Gender, and the Family
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A
Liberal Theory of Minority Rights
David Novak, Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory
David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity
Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality,
Species Membership
Religion, Culture, and Medical Ethics (R672/770; G620)
Bioethics emerged in the United States in the late 1960s as part of our culture's growing concern for individual rights and its critique of professional (and other) authority. This course surveys the contributions of leading figures in mainstream bioethics along with new currents and voices in the field. We will examine authors who have shaped academic writing and public policy in the United States along with the recent efflorescence of bioethics in different cultural contexts. Key topics include human experimentation, death and dying, organ transplantation, medicine and social justice, alternative healing practices, and reproductive technologies. These issues link up with ideas about the body, identity, freedom, commitment, and visions of human welfare. We’ll encounter the impressive methodological richness in bioethics, focusing on philosophical, theological, comparative, and ethnographic methods. Sources draw from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and western philosophical materials.
Texts
Paul Ramsey, The Patient as Person
Richard McCormick, S.J., How Brave a New World? Dilemmas in Bioethics
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics
Stephen Toulmin and Albert Jonsen, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning
William F. May, The Patient's Ordeal
Susan Wolf, ed., Feminism and Bioethics
Thomas H. Murray, The Worth of a Child
Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy
Elliot Dorff, Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics
Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
William LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan
Farhat Moazam, Biethics and Organ Transplantation in a Muslim Society: A Study in Culture, Ethnography, and Religion
Ronald M. Green, Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice
Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Contemporary Religious Ethics (R473/571)
Religious Ethics is a relatively new sub-specialty that examines how religion, broadly construed, generates, justifies, and applies ethical norms to assess the character and conduct of individuals and institutions. The “examination” to which I refer can be descriptive, evaluative, or conceptual: religious ethicists sometimes describe how religious traditions generate ethical norms, sometimes evaluate those norms, and sometimes clarify basic conceptual terms according to which those norms might be rendered more coherent or better understood. As an academic discipline, moreover, religious ethics encompasses how scholars assess the work of their colleagues in the academy. This course will survey the rise and development of religious ethics as a subfield in religious studies, starting in the early 1970s and proceeding into the present. We will carry out close readings of recent works that have shaped and moved this subfield. Readings will draw from the work of Gene Outka, John P. Reeder, Jr., James Childress, David Little and Sumner Twiss, James Gustafson, Jeffrey Stout, Robin Lovin, Stanley Hauerwas, Robert Gibbs, Saba Mahmood, John Kelsay, Aaron Stalnaker, and Lisa Sideris. Each of these authors has developed arguments and paradigms of inquiry that have contributed to the formulation of basic questions, sources, and methodologies in religious ethics. We will focus on their sources, their understanding (either implicit or explicit) of religion in relation to ethics, their methodologies, and their aims. Along the way, we’ll explore how normative inquiry is moving across the overlapping domains of religion, culture, politics, and science.
Texts
Gene Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis
James F. Childress, Who Decides? Paternalism in Health Care
John P. Reeder, Jr., Killing and Saving: Abortion, Hunger, and War
David Little and Sumner B. Twiss, Comparative Religious Ethics: A New Method
James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, vol. 1
Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom
Robert Gibbs, Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibility
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition
Aaron Stalnaker, Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine
John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam
Saba Mahmood, Politics and Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Lisa H. Sideris, Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection
Robin Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities
Religion and Social Criticism (R661/761)
This graduate course examines religion as a source or an object of social criticism, starting in the early modern period and concluding in the early part of the twentieth century. We will proceed along two general lines. First, we will explore how theologians, philosophers, and psychological and social theorists have seen religion as an object of critique, focusing in particular on critics’ ethical, political, psychological, or economic reasons. Second, we will examine how Western thinkers have seen religion as a source of ideas for evaluating matters of personal or communal identity, cultural practices, or social institutions. We will also explore how religion is theorized in the critical discourses surrounding it. One question we will consider is how (and in what ways) “religion” is conceptualized in political or intellectual regimes that espouse the toleration or the unmasking of religious belief or practice.
Texts
Recommended:
Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism
Required:
Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P., In Defense of the Indians
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
David Hume, A Natural History of Religion
Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Karl Marx Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
Karl Marx The German Ideology, Pt. 1
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
John Dewey, A Common Faith
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
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