The duties of each moment are the shadows beneath which hides the divine operation.
– Jean-Pierre de Caussade
To recover the practical ethical point of view, the first person is not enough to rediscover the importance of character, but we need to go more in-depth and investigate how the agent can be the author of his own conduct.
– G. Abbà
Introduction
Father Giuseppe Abbà’s assertion situates ethics within the framework of metaphysical realism, emphasizing the need for moral agents to be the authors of their conduct. This perspective challenges contemporary ethics, which often detaches moral propositions from their metaphysical roots. Thinkers like Iris Murdoch, Stanley Hauerwas, and Alasdair MacIntyre have sought to bridge this gap by reviving virtue ethics and integrating narrative approaches. However, while they present formidable critiques of modern Kantian and utilitarian ethics, they fall short of the metaphysical brilliance found in the works of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The Problem of Fragmentation in Modern Ethics
Modern ethical theory is often fragmented, a problem anticipated by thinkers like Bernard Lonergan, who observed that when theology is conceived empirically rather than classically, it becomes an ongoing methodological process rather than a unified system. While Murdoch, Hauerwas, and MacIntyre aim to recover the classical vision of virtue, their reliance on narrative approaches often emphasizes methodology over substance, reducing the metaphysical depth of classical traditions.
Iris Murdoch: The Aesthetic Pursuit of the Good
Iris Murdoch, despite being an agnostic, gestures toward metaphysical realism in The Sovereignty of the Good. She critiques the elimination of metaphysics from ethics, arguing that morality must be attached to the substance of reality. For Murdoch, the moral life involves aligning oneself with a transcendent framework that governs the individual, even if it remains partly incomprehensible.
Murdoch’s vision integrates elements of Plato’s philosophy, emphasizing the pursuit of the Good. However, her commitment to metaphysics is limited by her aesthetic orientation, which reduces the Good to a reified concept rather than engaging with a fully developed metaphysical system. In Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, she resists committing to a specific metaphysic, preferring a non-religious and non-totalitarian transcendence that ultimately lacks theological depth.
Stanley Hauerwas: Narrative Theology and Its Limits
Stanley Hauerwas, a virtue ethicist known for his Christian pacifism, develops his ethical framework through narrative theology. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hauerwas rejects system-building in favor of a descriptive, therapeutic approach to theology. For Hauerwas, narrative serves as an epistemological tool that shapes identity and reasoning, allowing Christian ethics to resist the reductionist tendencies of modern liberalism.
However, Hauerwas’ rejection of metaphysical speculation in favor of narrative creates its own limitations. By focusing on narrative as a methodological tool, he risks subordinating theology to the very liberal frameworks he critiques. His dependence on Barthian theology, which prioritizes biblical revelation over philosophical metaphysics, further contributes to a theological method that lacks the integrative depth of classical realism.
Alasdair MacIntyre: The Recovery of Virtue within Historical Narratives
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue critiques the modern abandonment of teleology and the Aristotelian conception of human flourishing. For MacIntyre, moral concepts arise within specific historical narratives and cannot be divorced from the social and cultural contexts in which they are embedded. This leads him to emphasize practices, narratives, and traditions as the framework for recovering virtue ethics.
While MacIntyre’s work represents a significant step toward a renewed Aristotelian ethics, his reliance on narrative and historical contingencies limits the universality of his ethical framework. His skepticism toward metaphysical biology and his Marxist-inspired critique of modernity undermine the coherence of his project. Despite his gradual move toward Thomistic synthesis, MacIntyre’s approach remains constrained by the very modern methodologies he critiques.
The Thomistic Alternative: Integrating Virtue and Metaphysics
In contrast to the narrative approaches of Murdoch, Hauerwas, and MacIntyre, St. Thomas Aquinas provides a unified ethical system grounded in metaphysical realism. For Aquinas, virtue is a habitus—a disposition developed through the habituation of passions in accordance with reason. This framework integrates the eternal, divine, natural, and human laws, providing a comprehensive vision of the moral life.
Thomas’ synthesis of Aristotelian teleology and Christian revelation offers a way to understand human flourishing as directed toward the beatific vision. Virtue is not merely a narrative construct but a metaphysical reality grounded in the convertibles of being, truth, and the good. This framework avoids the fragmentation of modern ethics by providing an absolute standard against which human conduct can be judged
Conclusion: The Problem of Roman Catholic Symmetry
Murdoch, Hauerwas, and MacIntyre each provide valuable insights into the recovery of virtue ethics, but their reliance on narrative and methodological constructs often lacks the metaphysical depth necessary for a coherent ethical system. St. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, offers a formidable synthesis of metaphysical realism and virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotelian teleology and enriched by Christian revelation.
Yet such a formidable system is, in essence, a Roman Catholic symmetrical idealogy, and this poses a significant problem to true biblical revelation. While Aquinas’ framework is comprehensive and philosophically robust, it relies on a synthesis that often elevates ecclesiastical and philosophical tradition to an equal or superior position to scripture. The result is a theological system that, while intellectually compelling, risks distorting the simplicity and directness of biblical revelation through its intricate symmetry.
True biblical revelation transcends any one system, including Aquinas’ Thomistic synthesis. Scripture reveals a God who communicates directly and authoritatively, providing the framework for human flourishing through divine law, grace, and the transformative power of the gospel. Any ethical system must ultimately submit to this biblical standard, recognizing that human constructs, no matter how sophisticated, are always subordinate to the divine wisdom revealed in the Word of God.
The recovery of virtue ethics must therefore go beyond both modern narrative approaches and Roman Catholic symmetry, seeking an ethics that is rooted in the authority of scripture and the transformative power of the gospel. Only then can the moral agent truly be the author of their conduct, guided by the light of biblical truth rather than the constructs of human philosophy.
[2] Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman; Todd, 1972), p. xi.
[3] Voegelin, Eric. Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, trans. M. L. Hanak, ed. David Walsh (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 392.
[4] A remark attributed to Philippa Foot: We were interested in moral language, she was interested in the moral life... She left us in the end. Conradi, P.J. Iris Murdoch: a Life. (London: Harper Collins, 2001)P. 302.
[5] Murdoch, Iris. Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 287-89. Her novels, in their attention and generosity to the inner lives of individuals, follow the tradition of novelists like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, George Eliot, and Proust, showing first-person calculation and action.
[6] ibid, p. 292.
[7] Murdoch, Iris. The sovereignty of the Good [New York: Schocken Books, 1971], p. 95.
[9] Kallenberg, Brad, J. Ethics as Grammar (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001)
[9] Hauerwas, Stanley The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) p. xxi.
[10] Hauerwas, Stanley. A Community of Character, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 89. To this end, he has chosen to write essays rather than books: Without presuming that my work has anything like the power of Wittgenstein’s, it remains my intention that the essays, like his aphorisms, should make the reader think at least as hard, if not harder, than the author has about the issues raised.
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] ibid.
[14] Ford, David. Barth and God’s Story: Biblical Narrative and the Theological Method of Karl Barth in the Church Dogmatics (Frankfurt, Bern, and New York: Peter Lang,1985). p.152.
[15] Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones, Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 21–44; and Hans W. Frei, Niebuhr’s Theological Background, in Faith and Ethics: The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, ed. Paul Ramsey (New York: Harper; Brothers, 1957), Other precursors include G. E. Wright and even C. S. Lewis.
[16] ibid., p. 7.
[17] As Hauerwas points out, the narrative is a tool to be used by theologians: ‘I hope it is clear, therefore, that it has never been, nor is it now, my intention to develop a narrative theology or a theology of narrative. I do not know what either would look like. Theology itself does not tell stories; rather, it is a critical reflection on a story’, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1983), p. xxv. Narrative figures throughout his work. He gives a clear account of why it is useful in The Peaceable Kingdom (pp. 17–34) and in Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology, eds. Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989).
[18] Macintyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. Pg 357.
[19] Macintyre, Alasdair. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1991), esp. pp. 170-215.
[20] Macintyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1981), 3rd Edition 2007. 129. Macintyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago: Carus Publishing, 1999. pp.83-7.
[21] A Short History of Ethics: A history of moral philosophy from the Homeric age to the twentieth century. New York: MacMillan, 1968. A detached account is impossible for several related reasons. Macintyre and Hauerwas both have learned from Wittgenstein that to understand a concept is not merely to have specific ideas about it; it also involves certain types of behavior and the ability to act in particular ways. So, to possess a concept involves behaving or being able to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances, to alter concepts, whether by modifying existing concepts or by making new concepts available or by destroying old ones, is to alter behavior.
[22] So, for example, in Dependent Rational Animals, he offers an anthropology of the virtues, and in his recently published book, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913–1922 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman; Littlefield, 2006), he speaks positively of Stein’s movement toward a ‘‘Thomist ontology.’’
[23] St. Thomas ST I-II, q. 90, a 1-4
[24] Murdoch, Iris. Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 40, 41.
