Winter 2002/Pasadena
ET848/548
Stassen
ET848/548: LOVE, JUSTICE, COMMUNITY, AND POSTMODERN ETHICS. Glen Stassen.
DESCRIPTION:
- We shall confront some constraints and constructive directions
suggested by a postmodernist and communitarian criticism of Enlightenment
influences on modern ethics. We shall analyze Michael Walzer's argument for how
to make ethical arguments in the postmodern context, and use him as a
comparison basis for analyzing other approaches. We shall seek to develop a
constructive, historically situated understanding of love and justice that
gives concrete guidance to community-formation and to the presently changing
global economic environment and its impact on local communities.
RELEVANCE FOR MINISTRY:
- Church members and outsiders East and West are anxious about the
impact of the global economy on their lives and on the future. Love, justice,
and community are central to Biblical faith, and are pivotal to ministry to the
lives of persons inside and outside the church. But in the modern cultural
context, they have been either neglected, rendered vague and abstract, or set
on a base that no longer holds.
COURSE FORMAT:
- Seminar discussions, in which we help each other understand,
analyze, compare, and assess different understandings of love and justice in
community. The seminar will meet weekly for three-hour sessions.
REQUIRED READING:
- Bellah, Robert N., et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life. Updated ed. University of California Press,
1996.
- Bounds, Elizabeth. Coming Together/Coming Apart: Religion, Community,
and Modernity. Routledge, 1997.
- Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World. 2nd ed.
Berrett-Koehler, 2001.
- Stassen, Glen. "Michael Walzer's Situated Justice." Journal of Religious
Ethics (Fall 1994).
- __________. "Narrative Justice as Reiteration." In Ethics Without
Foundations. Edited by Mark Nation, Nancey Murphy, and Stanley Hauerwas
(Abingdon, 1995).
- Walzer, Michael. Interpretation and Social Criticism. Harvard
University Press, 1987.
- __________. Obligations. Harvard University, 1970.
- __________. Revolution of the Saints. Harvard University, 1982.
- __________. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality.
Basic Books, 1983.
- __________. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad.
University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.
- __________. Selected essays.
- One of the following:
- Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the
Family. Basic Books, 1989.
- West, Cornel. Race Matters. Beacon Press, 2001.
- Selected essays on Biblical understandings of justice.
ASSIGNMENTS:
- Attend all seminar sessions prepared to analyze the readings of the
day, with a brief reflection paper. A seminar paper that compares the
understanding of the writer you choose with the analysis we develop during the
seminar. A reduction will be negotiated for students working at the 500
level.
PREREQUISITES:
- One prior course each in Christian ethics, one in Christian
philosophy, and one in either ethics, philosophy, or a topic closely related to
the seminar's theme.
RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM:
- Elective for M.A. and M.Div. students; CATS curriculum for
Ph.D./Th.M. students.
FINAL EXAMINATION:
- Instead of a final exam, we will meet to hear from those who are
writing papers.