This essay examines the role of virtue and the status of non-moral goods in conceptions of the good human life through an exploration of the thought of Confucius and Mencius. Both Confucius and Mencius lived in quite similar worlds, but their conceptualizations of the world differed from each another. This difference led them to hold different views on the role of virtue and the status of non-moral goods. On the one hand, Confucius highlighted the self-sufficiency of virtue, but he acknowledged (...) and appreciated the intrinsic and instrumental value of non-moral goods. On the other hand, while Mencius underscored the role of virtue as the best means to the best ends, he tried to depreciate the value of non-moral goods. As a consequence, even though their conceptions of the good life were essentially predicated on virtue, they parted company concerning the status of non-moral goods in human life. (shrink)

Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt seeks to reorient the conversation among religious ethicists and political theorists about religion in public life. Rather than focus on religious speech in general, Kaveny distinguishes deliberation and indictment as forms of discourse, and she subjects indictment to ethical evaluation. She aims to constrain the public exercise of inordinate indictment, while encouraging prophetic indictment that meets the demands of justice. While the book is a much-needed corrective, Kaveny's focus on the powerful rhetoric of prophetic indictment (...) omits the harms that can come to the body politic from unjust silence. Such silence deserves more moral attention. (shrink)

While greatly appreciative of Kaveny's important study of a neglected form of religious/moral discourse in the public square, this essay critically examines her metaphors for prophetic indictments and finds the metaphor of moral chemotherapy particularly problematic and the metaphor of warfare, connected with the just-war tradition, more promising. It stresses the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of avoiding contempt in prophetic indictments, as Kaveny conceives them, and finds her proposed solutions to this problem—standing with the people and expressing empathy and (...) compassion toward them—inadequate to the task. It further argues that attending to prophetic imagination, in addition to prophetic denunciation, can broaden the scope of practical deliberation and, at the same time, increase possible prophetic contributions to moral and political discourse. (shrink)

This essay is a reappraisal of Pierre Hadot's concept of spiritual exercises in response to recent criticisms of his work. The author argues that contrary to the claims of his critics, Hadot articulates a compelling argument that spiritual exercises that employ imaginative, rhetorical, and cognitive techniques are both necessary for and successful at producing a subject in which reason is integrated into human character. Such exercises are critical for overcoming the effects of habit, as a result of which everyday conduct (...) resists rational control, and Hadot provides a nuanced account of how particular practices affect different aspects of emotion, behavior, and thought. The concept of spiritual exercises remains a viable component of theoretical frameworks for the study of religious ethics, though the author concludes that Hadot's position on habit and its role in ethical practice requires further investigation. (shrink)

In Prophecy without Contempt, Cathleen Kaveny argues that prevailing scholarly approaches to religious and public discourse misunderstand the actual complexity of moral rhetoric in America. She endeavors to provide a better account through study of the role the Puritan jeremiad has played. Kaveny then offers a normative case for deliberative public moral discourse and the limited exercise of prophetic denunciation. I argue that Kaveny's distinction between deliberation and prophetic denunciation is overdrawn. They are ideal types that elide other rhetorical forms. (...) Moreover, both deliberative discourse and prophetic denunciation assume a social contract or shared tradition. Healthy moral discourse requires revolutionary rhetoric to interrogate and break traditions that are themselves morally compromised. (shrink)

In this “Response to Critics,” Cathleen Kaveny continues the conversation in the JRE symposium centered on her recent book, Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square. The book's central argument is that adequate discussion of contention in the contemporary public square requires attending to matters of rhetoric, particularly the rhetoric of prophetic indictment. Kaveny engages the comments of four interlocutors: Alda Balthrop-Lewis, James Childress, William Hart, and Martin Kavka. The first section, “Overarching Goals,” summarizes the objectives of the (...) book. The second section, “Methodology,” engages critics regarding methodological issues, highlighting Kaveny's commitment to a version of MacIntyre's tradition theory and her indebtedness to her legal training. The third section, “Structure,” responds to particular questions her interlocutors raise about the four parts of the book. The fourth section, “Larger Questions,” ponders the next stages of the academic and political discussion about contention in the public square. (shrink)

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in (...) those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments. (shrink)

This essay presents an ethnographic account of two divorced Catholic women's memories of praying to the Virgin Mary while seeking illegal abortions under the Romanian socialist regime. These women's stories focused on troubling memories of being in love, reflections that were retrospectively shaped by divorce. Drawing on Sigmund Freud's notion of the uncanny, I call these recollections uncanny memories of the self in love. Uncannily remembering one's self in love combines experiential self-examination and ethical assessment of actions. The notion of (...) the uncanny self in love thus helps bridge the divide between experience- and action-oriented approaches to lived ethics. I argue that the ethical significance of the Virgin Mary's actions depended on my acquaintances’ approach to love. For one woman seeking to stay estranged from her ex-husband, the Virgin Mary's actions accentuated his ethical immaturity. My other acquaintance harbored more ambivalent feelings toward her ex-husband; for her, talking about the Virgin Mary helped her relativize feelings of ethical indignation. As a core implication of this argument, I urge greater awareness of the problematic tendency to include the need for greater awareness of tendencies in theories of lived ethics to reify socially situated perspectives on love. (shrink)

Distributive justice assumes a morally critical judgment of nature, which typically contradicts providential conceptions. Hence, simple conceptions of divine Providence cannot support distributive justice. This essay analyzes and develops a complex strand of theorizing about Providence within Jewish philosophy that is compatible with distributive justice. According to this conception, the actions of divine Providence express different and mutually exclusive considerations of justice. Therefore, the moral value of outcomes is intransitive between the situations of different people. And while each providential action (...) is justified from an ethical perspective, the total outcome is distinct from God's ultimate desire. Human ethics responds to this disparity by redistribution. This conception of Providence also contributes to the additional issue of intergenerational justice through the concomitant idea of life missions. The classical rendering of missions creates problems, however, for distributive justice. I conclude by formulating a conception of life missions that is compatible with both distributive and intergenerational justice. (shrink)

Toward the end of the twentieth century, Highland Maya intellectuals and activists in Guatemala began to argue for the recognition of indigenous customary law, rooted in traditional Maya moral and ritual discourse. Such law is often in tension with the Western notion of rights that undergirds national and international treatises regarding indigenous peoples. This essay identifies three distinct but mutually engaged pairs of moral concepts—hot/cold, left/right, and favorable/not favorable—articulated through K'iche' Maya quotidian and ceremonial practices and speech. It also identifies (...) the extent to which they do not necessarily align with Western notions of good and bad. These three pairs of moral terms, specifically as conserved through the high-register of Maya discourse used by traditional ceremonial specialists, illustrate a normative means by which Highland Maya discern understandings of justice, and ground their advocacy for restorative justice. (shrink)