Though responses to Stout's book, "Democracy and Tradition," have touched on his discussion of rights, none has comprehensively examined his position on the subject. Having endorsed several objections Stout raises against some influential views on democracy and rights, this article proceeds to criticize Stout's description and theoretical account of the natural and human rights traditions. The central argument is that Stout cannot successfully both affirm the traditions and adhere to his account.

A fascinating study of moral languages and their discontents, Ethics after Babel explains the links that connect contemporary moral philosophy, religious ethics, and political thought in clear, cogent, even conversational prose. Princeton's paperback edition of this award-winning book includes a new postscript by the author that responds to the book's noted critics, Stanley Hauerwas and the late Alan Donagan. In answering his critics, Jeffrey Stout clarifies the book's arguments and offers fresh reasons for resisting despair over the prospects of democratic (...) discourse. (shrink)

If militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy (...) depends, to some significant degree, on how we choose to describe the crisis. Saying that we have already entered the new dark ages or a post-democratic era may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because anyone who accepts this message is apt to give up on the hard work of organizing and contestation that is needed to hold political representatives accountable to the people. This paper asks how one might strike the right balance between accuracy and hope in describing the democracy's current troubles. After saying what I mean by democracy and what I think the current threats to it are, I respond to Romand Coles's criticisms of reservations I have expressed before about rhetorical excess in the works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. This leads to a discussion of several points raised against me by Hauerwas. A digression offers some of my reasons for doubting that John Howard Yoder's biblical scholarship vindicates Hauerwas's version of pacifism. The paper concludes by arguing that Sheldon Wolin's work on the evisceration of democracy, though admirably accurate in its treatment of the dangers posed by empire and capital, abandons the project of democratic accountability too quickly in favor of the romance of the fugitive. (shrink)

This paper is a rejoinder to papers by Sabina Lovibond, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Sumner B. Twiss, G. Scott Davis, M. Cathleen Kaveny, and John Kelsay on the author's recent book "Democracy and Tradition". The argument covers a host of topics, ranging from epistemology and methodology to human rights, the common law, and Islamic ethics.

This paper responds to David Little 's recent discussion of the author's "holistic" criticisms of "Comparative Religious Ethics". In two crucial areas, Little seems to have moved beyond his original position: first, in granting that the relation among the levels of the structure of practical justification is interactive; and second, in making explicit his conception of the point of pursuing comparative studies. Both developments are welcome, but they raise doubts about whether much of the original position survives. The author articulates (...) these doubts, and also reflects on what difference holism makes in ethics. (shrink)

This essay assesses Robert Merrihew Adams' contribution to the religion-morality debate in light of questions in philosophical semantics and metaphilosophy, questions Adams raises without addressing directly. It sketches a holistic theory of the use of language in thought in the hope of providing a context for determining the value and philosophical relevance of Adams' semantic claims. It concludes by suggesting that descriptive metaethics should give way to explicitly historical studies, and by maintaining that historians of ethics need not postulate "meanings" (...) in order to make sense of what they do. (shrink)

The discipline of religious ethics consists in critical reflection on religious varieties of ethical discourse, but to study a variety of ethical discourse, we must look at particular examples of it. Which examples should we be look- ing at? What varieties or traditions shall we take them to represent? In answering these questions, scholars reveal much about their normative commitments. When "religious ethics" replaced "theological ethics" as a cur- ricular rubric in some schools, many ethicists attempted to present their work (...) as value neutral, but it is better to admit that commitments matter and are unavoidable. The new traditionalists make no secret of their nor- mative commitments, which imply an indictment of modern ethical dis- course as a whole. Their candor is commendable, but their indictment can be challenged. Debunkers of modernity have trouble accounting for their own position. Their samples of modern ethical discourse are not repre- sentative. Many democratic voices evidently remain unacknowledged and unexplained. (shrink)

What makes an interpretation good? This question defines an area where the concerns of philosophers and literary theorists coincide. One sort of response, which stresses the relativity of interpretation to the interests, purposes, and background beliefs of interpreters, increasingly commands the attention of both groups, though it is hard to get past one’s initial reaction, favorable or not, to the accompanying displays of rhetorical plumage. In this essay I shall try to do just that, in the hope of seeing what (...) the relativity of interpretation consists in and whether it need lead to the consequences that make some people pine for universal constraints and determinate meanings. (shrink)

In 1994 the "Ramsey Colloquium," under the leadership of Richard John Neuhaus, posed a challenge to what it called the "homosexual movement" within the Christian Church. The challenge was to prove that it had reasons distinguishable from secular liberalism--reasons consistent with orthodox Christian theology--in favor of same-sex coupling. Eugene Rogers's book, "Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God, can be read as a response to this challenge. The book is important not only for the content of (...) its arguments, which are imaginative and theologically rigorous, but also for the exemplary way in which Rogers exhibits charity in his account of his conservative opponents. Rogers's recent anthology, "Theology and Sexuality", provides additional evidence that a new, more promising debate is arising within the Church, a debate that has some hope of transcending the rhetoric of the culture wars. (shrink)

This chapter examines the theory of moral obligation presented by Robert Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods. The theory holds, quite plausibly, that obligations are requirements which arise within the context of social relationships. It also holds, more controversially, that genuinely moral obligations are requirements resulting from the commands of a loving God. The advantage Adams sees in introducing the notion of a loving God into the theory is that doing so rules out the possibility that certain sorts of horrendous (...) evils, including wanton cruelties, could turn out, according to the theory, to be morally obligatory. This advantage obtains, however, only if God's love is taken to be unlike that of the jealous, strongly preferential sort apparently attributed to God in many biblical passages. Adams does not adequately explain why he identifies the God posited by his theory with the God of the Old and New Testaments. Nor does he adequately explain why one should suppose that a God who conforms to Adams's conception of a perfectly loving being actually exists, given the horrendous evils there are and given the confusing biblical portrait of God as both a horror-defeater and a horror-commander. All things considered, more modest versions of the social theory of obligation appear more plausible than Adams's metaphysically extravagant version. A slightly more modest version would appeal directly to Adams's own theistic theory of excellence, without making reference to divine commands. An even more modest version would eschew the theistic commitments of Adams's ethical theory altogether. The chapter concludes by raising questions about Adams's conception of the metaphysics of morals as a discipline analogous to scientific inquiry into the natural kinds. (shrink)

This article concerns central theological commitments in Cornel West's prophetic social criticism. West is best interpreted as someone proposing a politics of charism, in which human arrangements need constantly to make room for and conform themselves to the divine gifts of inspired speech, music, knowledge, and love. The church, for West, is a fallible, earthen vessel into which God's charismatic treasures are poured. The church's prophetic mission must receive prophetic criticism; it should disconnect itself from empire, capital, racism, sexism, and (...) homophobia. What West's Christology might be is, however, less certain. (shrink)

This paper takes up the claim, made in some Buddhist texts, that one can transcend morality. The author distinguishes a weak and a strong sense in which this might be so, and explicates the strong sense in terms of Strawson's notion of presupposition.

Though responses to Stout's book, "Democracy and Tradition," have touched on his discussion of rights, none has comprehensively examined his position on the subject. Having endorsed several objections Stout raises against some influential views on democracy and rights, this article proceeds to criticize Stout's description and theoretical account of the natural and human rights traditions. The central argument is that Stout cannot successfully both affirm the traditions and adhere to his account.

Morality's relation to religion stands among the broad cultural issues that pull people towards philosophy and religious studies. We hope for insight, but what we find when we get there is another matter – a debate on ‘is’ and ‘ought’ with all the marks of a dead end. While the intellectual goals and strategies that led in this direction have elicited little scholarly attention to date, the time and the tools for an effective critique may now be at hand.