Toward global ethics.
Cahill, Lisa Sowle
ONE OF THE MOST daunting questions contemporary life poses to
Catholic social teaching is whether its concept of "common
good" can survive globalization. That question became acutely
urgent in September 2001, when the terrorist organization al Queda
heightened its visibility among the ranks of transnational actors. The
continuing value of the "common good" concept will depend on
its ability to encourage intelligent communal discourse' about the
possibility and shape of a "good society," (1) avoiding both
gross injustice and the violent, anarchic solutions it can provoke.
Catholic tradition has operated to date on the premises that some social
visions are more reasonable and beneficent than others and that bona
fide argument not only can and will elucidate the difference, but will
produce laws and institutions reflecting it. In the nugget definition of
John XXIII:
The common good touches the whole man, the needs both of his body
and of his soul. Hence it follows that the civil authorities must
undertake to effect the common good by ways and means that are proper to
them; that is, while respecting the hierarchy of values, they should
promote simultaneously both the material and social welfare of the
citizens. (2)
Effecting the common good is difficult even within one national or
ethnic community; if taken to planetary lengths, responsibility for the
common good seems nigh impossible to secure. Even before the American
public's forced reeducation in varieties of Islam and of Middle
Eastern society, communications technologies had illumined a
kaleidoscope of cultural traditions and clashes that make universal
reason and natural law seem increasingly incredible. Few today would
venture to arrange a hierarchy of "man's" physical and
spiritual needs, or to define "material and social welfare" in
the same way for all societies. In any event, international relations seem more determined by economic than by moral forces, the former having
been magnified by new information systems to an unprecedented and
virtually uncontrollable degree. The global dominance of transnational
economic institutions and corporations, evading governance by national
states or international bodies, has almost demolished the idea that
relations among peoples can be promoted cooperatively under an effective
world authority. (3) Indeed, the perpetrators of the 2001 terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon sought
self-justification precisely in the idea that the U.S. is a malign
international power that only retaliatory violence can curb. (4) The
Catholic common good paradigm, relying on nature, reason, and universal
law, has come to seem an Enlightenment relic, naively isolated from
cultural pluralism, economic globalization, and competing philosophical
and theological interpretations of the human condition, especially those
projected from other cultural situations. In fact, these challenges
raise the possibility that the question of a universal ethic or
normative common good is no longer even the right question to ask.
On the other side, the United Nations and its Secretary General
Kofi Annan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in late 2001 to symbolize
the hope for and reality of "a better organized and more peaceful
world." (5) In his Nobel lecture in Oslo, Annan said that
"humanity is indivisible," and affirmed that "peace must
be sought, above all, because it is the condition for every member of
the human family to live a life of dignity and security." (6)
Annan's leadership assumes the ability of all cultures to identify
conditions of a dignified and secure life, then to seek it cooperatively
for all persons and groups.
Recent issues of Theological Studies have sought to foster
"global awareness" in moral as well as theological
scholarship, while displaying the cultural variation around the world
and within United States theology itself. (7) In the 2001 "Notes on
Moral Theology," Jean Porter takes the position that a global ethic is impossible, and that it is moreover unnecessary because cultures can
overcome moral disagreements by proceeding on an ad hoc and pragmatic
basis. (8) William O'Neill, S.J., writing about African thought,
avoids any antithesis between universal and particular moralities by
recasting the debate as a discussion of how narrative traditions
critically reinterpret themselves using rhetoric and symbols such as
"human rights." (9) Neither Porter nor O'Neill is
prepared to endorse an objective, universal, or common ethic in fact or
in principle, though both allude to the fact that people from very
different cultures do come together to debate and even agree on paths
toward resolution of difficult social problems. In Porter's words,
"The very success of these processes does at least suggest that
there are significant commonalities in human existence that make
cross-cultural moral consensus a real possibility. We cannot take such a
consensus as a given, bestowed on us by a universal morality, but that
does not mean that we have to despair of developing it." (10) Such
development will have to do without hope for "a global ethic"
however. My aim is to explore actual intercultural moral and policy
consensus and the character of practical reason, in order to nuance the
idea of a global common good and to strengthen the prospect of finding
global ethics.
THE IMPORTANCE AND ELUSIVENESS OF GLOBAL ETHICS
The search for a global approach to the common good has serious
practical implications. (11) Too often in the past, and as numerous
postmodern and deconstructionist thinkers have noted, construals of
universal human nature and of the good society have been projected by
elites as ideological protections of their own interests, usually in
willful ignorance of glaring cultural biases. The Ugandan theologian
Emmanuel Katongole is a Catholic priest educated in philosophy at Rome
and Leuven, who has taught at Duke University in collaboration with
Stanley Hauerwas. According to Katongole, liberal political theory and
its prioritization of the nation state serve "the Western-inspired
capitalistic economy," (12) with results that can hardly be
justified in terms of the global common good. On the other hand,
however, the abandonment of any notion of moral objectivity or shared
human needs and values could create a dangerous vacuum, especially in
"first world" academia and polities, where the atrophy of
serious commitment to global social change threatens to leave an open
field for naked assertions of self-interest. (13) If philosophy and
theology have given up on global standards, economic institutions have
not, and the standards of the latter are hardly egalitarian. Likewise,
recent events in response to terrorism have exposed a debate, even rift,
in U.S. foreign policy over whether an "America first" agenda
should guide the global influence of the world's remaining
superpower.
Communication, consensus, and action across cultural borders do
take place, however provisional and fragile their achievement might be.
Political scientists Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink describe the
strength and effectiveness of transnational advocacy networks that have
been able to build on broad intercultural agreement around three central
issue areas: human rights, the environment, and women's rights.
(14) It may be possible to aim at a theory of "global ethics,"
if not of "a global ethic" in the sense of a single, closely
specified set of norms. "Significant commonalities in human
experience" do give rise to common perceptions of justice and
injustice across cultural boundaries, especially when specific issues
are at stake.
One glimpse of the possibility of global ethics is given through
the International Criminal Court, established in 1998 by 120 signatory
nations. For instance, in constituting sexual assault as a crime against
humanity, the founding documents point to and reinforce a global rise in
consciousness of women's human dignity. The shameful fact that the
United States still opposes the ICC merely confirms that some moral
ideals are so widely recognized that they will not be defeated by even
the most powerful dissenters. Genocide is also now commonly recognized
to be a crime and not a tolerable face of war. In 2001, international
war crimes tribunals convicted eight Rwandans and a Bosnian Serb
general, Radislav Kristic, of this crime, in separate trials in Arusha
and The Hague.
International concern about the environment testifies further that
humans everywhere require certain natural conditions of life and that
moral obligations to protect nature make sense to peoples around the
world. The fact that in 2001 the United States reneged on a previous
commitment and became the lone dissenter to the Kyoto Protocol, an
international agreement to fight global warming, was met by
disapprobation both internationally and domestically. The
Protocol's supporters, including the European Union and Japan,
proceeded with implementation. These instances illustrate that there are
some issues on which it is possible to mobilize action by drawing
together different interests around "global" ideals of social
responsibility, even if they are not always uniformly endorsed or
applied. Global ethics does not stand or fall with a universal set of
specific moral prescriptions, which few today would defend, but with the
idea that there are after all some moral nonnegotiables and some clearly
identifiable injustices to which all cultures and religions should be
responsive for humanistic reasons. (15)
As the Catholic social ethicist John Coleman has stated, the common
good "looks to both some objectivity of the good and a concomitant
societal consensus" about public goods and the institutional
arrangements necessary for human flourishing. (16) While objectivity and
consensus may seem like elusive philosophical and practical goals,
Emmanuel Katongole is ultimately right to acknowledge that "the
notions of truth, rational justification, and objectivity themselves are
not in question; the problem is that the standards for their achievement
have been set in the wrong place." (17) A mistaken standard of
objective truth is a simple and accurate correspondence between an
object known and a rational knower's mind or propositions, a
standard without which there can be no demand for detailed behavioral
prescriptions that remain the same always and everywhere. Even a very
modestly realistic ethic must follow the pragmatist turn in recent
philosophy to the extent of granting that truth is integrally related to
the social and historical context of the knower and hence to community
experiences and practices. (18)
The issue is not so much whether moral truth exists at all, but how
it emerges from the relation between agents or knowers and their
contexts, and how radically it varies with histories, communities, and
traditions. Do individual subjects or groups create disparate realities
and truths through idiosyncratic practices, languages, and
self-understandings? Is "rational justification" radically
particular to specific traditions, or is there such a thing as
reasonable evidence upon which different communities can agree? Over
against the stark alternatives of objectivist foundationalism and
relativist nonfoundationalism, one possibility is "a refigured
model of rationality that encompasses radical contextuality as well as
cross-contextual, interdisciplinary conversation." (19) Maybe the
"commitment to a mind-independent reality" and a
"fundamental presupposition of objectivity" are still viable
if sufficiently revised, but the evidence must be pragmatic,
interactive, and provisional, disclosed through the "pull of
purpose" in moral experience. (20)
I want to probe the meaning of global ethics as an intercultural
process, serving the common good through experience-based consensus
about the truth of moral relationships. If it makes no sense to speak of
a real, reasonable, and truly "common" human good, in the
interests of a better global society, then the trajectory of the modern
papal social encyclicals has outlived its usefulness (some would say its
ability to oppress). If global ethics for the common good does or still
can make moral sense, then it must be revised in light of a much more
pluralistic and decentralized philosophical, theological, and ecclesial situation than obtained over a century ago when modern papal social
teaching had its inception in Leo XIII's Rerum novarum. If
postmodern, deconstructive philosophy and politics have worked as
strategies of liberation for the oppressed, now common good theories can
become strategies of accountability for the oppressors.
Reinterpreting common good and defending global ethics requires a
reexamination of practical reason and the relation of moral truth to
context, to commitment, and to action. It requires a refined
understanding of goods and relationships as interdependent components of
morality. My present essay, though its aim is dialogical, obviously
conducts this project from the standpoint of "Western" moral
theory and a discussion about global institutions and ethics that has
its base point in Euro-American theory and experience. It cannot be
claimed, a priori, that the proposals it advances will be as useful for
thinkers in other contexts as they might be in the originating one.
Katongole, no stranger to the canons of Western academia, no doubt
speaks for representatives of many other cultural traditions when he
resists having African philosophy and social thought "placed"
by Western paradigms that ask different questions, work on different
assumptions, and misinterpret African subject matter. (21)
The same note is sounded by another non-Westerner who uses the gap
between cultures as her site of boundary-crossing creativity. In her
memoir Border Passage, the Muslim Egyptian Leila Ahmed (now a Harvard
professor) poignantly describes the lack of fit she felt between her
complicated experience growing up in an upper class family in
Nasser's Egypt, and the Western theory (Marxism) she was expected
to command when she arrived as a graduate student at Cambridge
University in the 1960s. Why, she wondered inchoately, was there one
acceptable theoretical construct to which academic success was attached,
and which was built out of the experience of the white, middle class,
male majority? Ahmed missed in those days "a language with which to
speak subtly and complexly and in ways that would enable us to make fine
but crucial distinctions in reflecting on the highly fraught and
complicated subject of being Arab." (22) Today, languages suited to
the complexities of other communities of experience are emerging from
those communities themselves. (23) While they hardly reject
intercultural communication and consensus, much less concerted social
action against injustice and for the common good, the terms on which
these are sought and understood are original.
REINTERPRETING MORAL REASON
What ideas or definitions of moral rationality and universality are
rejected by the skeptics of global ethics or "a common
morality" who do address this problem out of Western
academia's civil war among liberalism, foundationalism, and
postmodernism? Most are motivated precisely against the imperialist
tendencies and pasts of their own cultural traditions. Jean Porter, for
instance, is wary of "a global ethic" that claims that
"all moral traditions share a fundamental core, which amounts to a
universal valid morality," since statements of very general
principles are uselessly "platitudinous," and specific
derivations will be controversial and incompatible. (24) It would be
better simply to seek practical consensus ad hoc. Others similarly
reject "the misleading and impossible quest for a moral Reason
which stands outside the flow of time and contingency." (25)
While such characterizations find their target in some forms of
Kantianism and liberalism, and rightly battle dogmatism and imperialism,
there may be other, less pernicious, forms of moral realism available to
serve as part of a liberative strategy. Not surprisingly, Roman Catholic
authors (including Porter and O'Neill) often see promise in an
Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of moral rationality, linked to
"narrative" or traditions and practices as historically
reappropriated. Can historically located moral reasoning still lead to
generalizable knowledge about human goods and relationships, and at
least some concrete specifications, even if not a universal
"code" of behavior? A rereading of practical reason can assist
toward a positive answer.
Although one line of Aristotelian and Thomistic interpretation
emphasizes the tradition-bound and even revelation-dependent exercise of
practical reason, (26) another line stresses practical reason's
realist dimensions to give it broader scope. Though now ably recast in
the more historically sensitive treatments of authors such as Daniel
Westburg (27) and Pamela Hall, (28) a realist interpretation of
practical reason, as knowing and applying the natural law, already
predominated in exaggerated form in 19th- and 20th-century Catholic
moral theology. Earlier sources' abstract and deductive model of
rationality is now deservedly repudiated. (29) Can moral reasonableness
be reconstructed to allow both for the historical nature of moral
knowledge, and for a common, even global, morality? For that matter,
even traditional Catholic social thought was hardly abstract or
deductive in its progressive interpretations of the common good. Indeed,
the faultiness of certain concrete proposals or assumptions (like gender
inequity, the hierarchical arrangement of social classes, and a
conservative view of government authority) derive from the ad hoc and
situated nature of the reasoning process behind them, especially in the
early social encyclicals. At the same time, themes such at the inherent
sociality of human persons, the reciprocity of rights and duties among
social members, a responsibility to the common good that morally
overrides mere assertions of power or interest, the right of all to
participate in the common good, and, increasingly, its
"universal" or global nature and the "preferential option
for the poor," are claims whose recognizable moral worth may
survive the tradition's acknowledged shortcomings. (30)
Thomas Aquinas's moral theory can be useful in moving past the
impasse between the historicity of reason and the universality that
global ethics seems to demand, by allowing an interpretation of moral
objectivity and reasonableness as fundamentally practical. Though by no
means exhaustive of wisdom on the subject of global ethics, the thought
of this major figure of Western Christianity provides insights that
resonate with other cultural views of the practical and
"narrative" character of morality and its bearing on moral
relations among communities. For Aquinas, moral reason is practical
reason, perfected by the virtue of prudence. Prudence is an intellectual
virtue whose chief purpose is not to attain speculative truth, but to
execute truthful action. (31) Two points in particular about practical
reason or prudence bear on the present discussion. A first is that
practical reason deals with the truth in contingent matters, for human
action is always particular and historical. Conversely and by
implication, moral reasoning always takes place within ongoing patterns
of action. A second and related point is that prudence as an
intellectual virtue is closely bound up with moral virtue. Moral
knowledge and truthful action require the interdependent working of
reason and will, that is to say, desire and commitment. These two points
will be treated in the next two sections.
PRACTICAL REASON IN AQUINAS: CONTINGENCY AND TRUTH
First, then, the contingency of the subject matter of practical
reason has implications for the nature of moral truth. The deductive
method of neo-Scholasticism, and its claim to timeless certitude in the
specific conclusions proposed on the basis of its principles, is clearly
untenable, a point already well established. (32) Aquinas himself says
in defining prudence that "the intellect cannot be infallibly in
conformity with things in contingent matters" (ST 1-2 q. 57, a.5;
see also q. 94, a. 4 on the natural law and contingent truth). A recent
interpreter, Pamela Hall, describes knowledge of the natural law through
practical reason as "narrative" in character, by which she
means that "both knowledge of human nature and what conduces to the
flourishing of human nature" are
discovered progressively over time and through a process of
reasoning engaged with the material of experience. Such reasoning is
carried on by individuals and has a history within the life of
communities. We learn the natural law, not by deduction, but by
reflection upon our own and our predecessors' desires, choices,
mistakes, and successes. (33)
A point to be stressed perhaps more strongly is that human nature,
its ends, its flourishing, and its moral standards are not
"discovered" as already existent and unchanging entities. They
too are "contingent" and perhaps in some degree mutable; the
extent to which this is the case is a matter of debate. Aquinas's
distinction between primary and secondary precepts of natural law
introduces the possibility of claiming more stability for basic human
inclinations and ends than for more concrete specifications of their
fulfillment. (34) A somewhat different implication of Aquinas's
view, however, is important for the present discussion: moral reason,
though historical and tradition-dependent, nonetheless accesses truth.
The intellectual virtues, including prudence, are "directed to the
apprehension of truth (see 1, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2)." (35) But truth
and reason in moral contexts have to be understood as integrally bound
to action, indeed as emerging within action, not only as "leading
to" it as their effect. Since prudence is "right reason about
things to be done" (ST 1-2, q. 57, a. 4), "practical
truth," the truth of practical reason, "arises only within
contingent states of affairs," (36) and by means of an
"inevitable choice between competing options." (37) Moral
truth as practical truth is a truth of action. Aquinas thus generalizes
the basic principles of the natural law from inclinations and patterns
of behavior that all societies experience as contributing to human
flourishing (preserving life, rearing young, cooperating socially) (ST
1-2, q. 94, a. 2), with applications depending in part on circumstances
and cultural settings. (38) Moral truths, both particular and general,
are realized inductively, experientially, interactively, and in the
midst of concrete human problems and projects.
The possibility of global ethics, then, should not be pondered in
the realm of abstract or deductive reason alone, but through engagement
with practical, political affairs. The question is whether there are
some human relationships, undertakings, or crises, that are or are
becoming "global" in scope, and some equally wide moral truths
that are known by engaging them. The fact that certain transnational and
even global institutions have de facto emerged due to communication,
information, and transportation technologies, and are already shaping
patterns of relationship among human persons and communities, means
there is a transnational and even global moral sphere, not just a
"political" or "economic" one. Politics and
economics are moralities by other names. Moral concern, moral
obligation, and the possibility of moral action exist today in expanding
circles of relationship, and it is here that reasonableness and truth
find their practical meaning and are tested. (39) Are global moral
relationships advancing or demeaning the common good? Are there any
common moral values to guide the long-distance, complex, and
increasingly comprehensive relations among cultures, values that can
command a reasonable consensus because they are recognized for their
human "truth" from a variety of different settings?
Vietnamese theologian Peter Phan reminds us that liberation
theology holds theory secondary to practice in that "praxis is the
criterion of truth." Yet theory and practice are always
dialectically related, "in a perpetual motion," so that
"the pendulum of cognition never comes to a dead stop." (40)
The criterion of global moral truth must be a network of global
experiences and practices that also provide its content. Writing of
culturally diverse liberation theologies, Phan sees "fellow
travelers on a common journey to a new destination," particular
voices that can "construct a new harmony" (which is not the
same as a "false universalism"), attacking, for example, the
"near-universal domination of the free market system." (41)
The question for global ethics of the common good, though, is whether
such harmony exists outside of Christian theology. (42) The test must
similarly be practical. The case for global ethics must be advanced not
only intellectually, but on the basis of facts.
In the nature of the case, practical evidence for a global
convergence of moral values cannot be conclusive and final. But it can
support the kind of truth claim about reasonableness in contingent
matters that is proper to the moral realm. Several examples of
internationally acclaimed moral ideals and calls to action against
injustice have already been offered (including the environment, human
rights, women's rights, genocide, and economic exploitation). A
current illustration is the relative success of United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan in building international consensus around certain
social justice ideals, even when their implementation would require
compromise of the interests of some ostensible supporters.
In September 2000, the U.N. General Assembly issued a Millennium
Declaration that outlined general ideals and goals emerging from
concrete experiences of injustice worldwide. The Millennium Declaration
problematizes the unevenly distributed benefits and costs of
globalization, resolving that "only through broad and sustained
efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all
its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and
equitable." Among "fundamental values ... essential to
international relations in the 21st century," the Declaration
includes freedom (and democracy), equality, solidarity, tolerance,
respect for nature, and shared responsibility (of nations for worldwide
development). Proceeding with specific recommendations, it resolves to
halve by 2015 the number of people earning less than $1 a day and those
without safe drinking water; to ensure universal primary schooling for
boys and girls; to halt the spread of major contagious diseases; to
assist AIDS orphans; and by 2020, to improve the lives of slum dwellers.
It also resolves to promote gender equality, to give young people
opportunities to work; to encourage the availability of affordable
therapeutic drugs in developing countries; and to create partnerships
for development with the private sector and civil society. (43) Although
these ideals do not come with specific implementation strategies, their
mere articulation serves as a moral wake-up call to governments and
CEOs, and a call to action to activists and NGOs. Their moral force
comes from the fact that they name essentials of human flourishing that
few of the most ardent deconstructionists or practitioners of
Realpolitik would have the hardihood to deny.
Ideals took on a more practical and pointed face in April 2001,
when the General Assembly adopted a Declaration of Commitment on
HIV/AIDS. In establishing a world "superfund" for AIDS and
other fatal diseases that afflict the developing world, Annan focused
international moral attention on a specific disaster that is virtually
global in scope. The Declaration of Commitment calls for both prevention
and treatment. It names goals that specifically address the transmission
and treatment of HIV/AIDS, but it also reaches much further into social
structures that create the conditions under which AIDS spreads,
including international debt, gender inequality, and lack of education.
(44) The Declaration receives practical cash value from the fund that
subvents it, a proposed 7 to 10 billion dollars. Initial donations, the
Declaration itself, and the publicity it has received should be useful
tools in mobilizing global action around a plague that is integrally
linked to the world's most entrenched structural injustices.
Critics of the idea of global ethics might object that U.N.
consensus statements reflect certain national interests
disproportionately over others; that they voice general aims with little
practical hold on reality; and that the disingenuousness of some
signatories results in very uneven implementation. There is truth in all
these criticisms. Nevertheless, programmatic moral statements give moral
leadership a global face, encourage grassroots activism, support local
and regional structural change, and stimulate concerted resistance to
noncooperative nations or transnational institutions. They aid the
"mobilization of shame" (45) that pressures outliers to
international agreements to reconsider their policies. This whole
process both relies on and reveals the appeal of widely shared values
rooted in perceptions of justice and injustice, funding a global ethical
process that is most successful in eliciting transformative outrage when
concrete abuses are on the table.
The U.N. consensus documents demonstrate that there are certain
basic human needs and goods that are not all that difficult to recognize
globally, and that these can even be the basis of global ethical ideas
and norms. They illustrate another point that takes us back to
Aquinas's treatment of practical reason: what is at stake in
cultural differences over ethical issues like gender equality, debt
relief, health inequities, and politically motivated violence is not so
much disagreement about what is good for human "flourishing"
but about who exactly is entitled to flourish. The aspect of
Aquinas's thought that bears on the entitlement question is the
link between intellectual and moral virtue. In his view "the truth
of the practical intellect" depends "on conformity with right
appetite" (ST 1-2, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3). The proper exercise of
practical reason requires moral as well as intellectual excellence. It
is not enough to identify human goods; it is also necessary to will or
desire them in the right way. The most radically divisive moral dispute
historically and culturally is whether a virtuous attitude toward the
sharing of goods must be broadly inclusive, or whether, on the contrary,
it is morally praiseworthy to allot access to even basic goods (not only
luxuries) on the basis of intrinsic status, social rank, or merit. Let
us return in more depth to this point.
AQUINAS: PRACTICAL REASON AND VIRTUE
Moral reasoning and moral virtue require one another and develop
simultaneously. According to Aquinas, "moral virtue cannot be
without prudence, because it is a habit of choosing" (ST 1-2, q.
58, a. 4), and likewise, prudence "cannot be without moral
virtue" (ST 1-2, q. 58, a. 5). In judging the right action to take
in particular cases, it is not enough to know general principles of
action; to judge well, one must also be disposed to or desire the
particular goods or ends that would be reasonable, not letting
one's judgment be swayed or destroyed by concupiscence or
disordered desire (ST 1-2, q. 58, a. 5). The central thesis of Daniel
Westberg's Right Practical Reason is that intellect and will are
interactive in the process of action; it is a misconception to think
that the reason first knows goods that the will subsequently does or
does not choose. (46) In line with our preceding consideration of moral
truth, Westberg affirms that, for Aquinas, moral "truth" is
found, not in apprehension as such, but in judgment leading to action.
Acting is the chief end of practical reason as well as the central
aspect of moral virtue; (47) reason, will, and action are simultaneous
in moral relationships and in the attainment of moral truth.
Because no created or finite good is absolute, and since goods
appear as alternatives and can conflict, knowledge of practical goods is
often ambiguous. (48) The will, habituated to certain types of choices
through participation in patterns of behavior, influences intellectual
knowledge of goods. Will and reason acting together particularize and
specify the goods at stake in any circumstance, giving rise again to
action, which in turn situates reason and will. For both Aristotle and
Aquinas, this results in a certain circularity in moral virtue.
"For reason to be correct, the appetite needs to be properly
ordered, seeking after proper goals, with contrary or excessive desires
properly regulated, fear, anger, and so on under control, and proper
regard for other persons' good held in the will. When reason and
appetite are mutually regulated in this way, then the agent may be seen
as virtuous." (49) Conversely, "sin" or moral evil
"can occur in intention for the wrong goods, faulty deliberation,
erroneous judgment, and poor execution. Intellect, will, and emotion all
mutually affect each other, and share in the order of virtue and the
disorder of vice." (50) Aquinas reduced this problem of circularity
in reason and will by giving priority for Christians to the virtue of
charity, (51) but he still maintained that there is a natural realm of
right reason in which virtue may be understood in relation to human
goods. (52) Moreover, even when formed by charity, the morally virtuous
person still must choose among complex, ambiguous finite goods, a
process that demands the coordination of natural human powers of
discernment.
Before considering how the integration of reason, will, and action
bear on global ethics, it will be useful to nuance further the senses in
which we may speak of the goods that ground morality. Practical reason
is concerned with knowledge, choice and realization of goods for human
beings. What are these goods? They are both material and social, both
personal and institutional. Practical reason must integrate these
aspects. Thinking back to the Millennium Statement, it is obvious that
most human misery results from poverty and lack of essential material
goods like food and water, clothing and shelter, and treatment for
illness. A further reflective step identifies social goods, the lack of
which results in poverty, and access to which also means better access
to things required for physical survival. Social goods are also good in
their own right, as comprising and enabling moral relations among
persons and intellectual, moral and spiritual goods of persons (like
knowledge, love, faithfulness, honesty, and hope). Some goods of social
relationship or social participation are gender equality, education,
employment, religious membership, and political participation both for
individual citizens and for nations and other collective agents. At the
level of consistent social and cultural patterns which either do or do
not include given categories of individuals or groups, these social
goods take shape as social institutions. Grounding these institutions
are moral attitudes or dispositions that prescribe inclusivity and its
extent: respect for freedom and equality, solidarity, tolerance, and
shared responsibility are named in the Millennium Statement.
Moral ambiguity often results from conflicts among goods and the
need to prioritize them, at least in concrete cases. Though all cultures
value both individuals and social roles, differences about priorities
frequently result from the relative weight given to individual rights
and communal needs. This illustrates the interdependence of moral
knowledge and action with choice and commitment (the will). The place
where intercultural pluralism is most strikingly encountered is in
social institutions that extend and normalize opportunities for access
to goods. While no one would deny that basic human goods are due to
one's friends and to equal members of communities, communal
membership and hierarchies within and among communities are much more
controversial matters. Prudent moral reasoning requires virtue, but what
is a virtuous disposition toward the needs of others? The modern virtue
of solidarity reflects the Enlightenment ideal of equality as well as
intercultural awareness, enabled by mass media, of common needs and
suffering. Solidarity may not imply absolute equality, but it requires
universal access to a decent minimum of goods. The ideal of inclusive
solidarity, in contrast to the idea that justice permits division by
gender, caste, and ethnicity, is new as an international policy
emphasis. However, it is rooted in ancient moral and religious
traditions, East and West, including Christianity (Matthew 5:38-48,
Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 10:25-37, Galatians 3:28). (53)
One Indian Christian theologian writing from Delhi vouches that
"we need a sense of human, moral, and spiritual values ... and an
appreciation and quest for the common good, local and universal, leading
to justice and equality." Further, he insists, religions have
"an inbuilt prophetic structure" based on their acceptance of
"the common density of all peoples." (54) A Confucian
philosopher confirms the ideals of mercy, neighbor-love and compassion
found in many religious and moral traditions when he identifies the
"one persistent idea" in Confucianism as a universal ideal of
"human-heartedness," a centering of "ethical interest on
the love and care for one's fellows, that is, and affectionate
concern for the well-being of others." (55) Yet what another
scholar of Confucianism observes on this point is equally true of
Christianity and other traditions: concern and the constituents of
well-being were not traditionally disseminated on an egalitarian basis,
but according to one's place in a structured hierarchy, above all,
in China, the family. A concept such as human rights only becomes viable
within Confucianism on the basis of 18th-century reinterpretations of
humaneness that value the enhancement of all human lives. (56)
Although the New Testament contains many affirmations of socially
radical and inclusive discipleship, these strands have never been given
unqualified institutional support, nor is it likely that they were fully
realized at Christianity's origin. The Christian churches have
found their truly inclusive prophetic voice only in recent times, and
religious and humanistic calls for solidarity still need to be in
dialectic relation to individual and cultural experience, and to moral
insight from those whose testimony is still marginal to the dominant
debates. In all societies, practical reasoning about goods will only be
inclusive and participatory if it is informed by a will to place the
needs and sufferings of all on the same plane, and to reform practices
and institutions that unduly prioritize individual or collective
self-interest.
Injustice and harm to the common good, then, result from the
reality of bias, moral evil, or--in religious language--sin.
Self-interested manipulation of social norms is a problem even in
age-old caste systems that already allocate goods inequitably. Bias
ranges itself against contemporary solidarity in rationalizations
against consistent inclusiveness. Subjective rationalizations and social
ideologies--often co-opting religion for their ends--still define some
people as not fully human, not human in the same way, or not as
deserving, as other people whose entitlement to basic goods is
recognized by those who control access. Self-interest is exacerbated by
scarcity of resources and opportunity for domination. The central
obstacle to global ethics, therefore, is not mainly intellectual
ignorance of commonalities in human nature that make certain goods
necessary to human well-being. It is unwillingness to distribute
community resources equitably, and to extend participation in basic
goods to all human individuals and groups. Intellectual knowledge, moral
orientation, and ongoing patterns of action reinforce one another for
good or for ill.
Thomas Aquinas is highly instructive on the genesis of this
dynamic. The second previously mentioned point about Aquinas's view
of practical reason is that morality involves both reason and will,
knowledge of the true and desire for the good. These are not
sequentially related but interdependent throughout the phases of moral
agency. To understand "global ethics," we must go beyond
asking whether certain human goods, material and social, can be
universally known in principle, and at what level of specificity. In
view of the interdependence of the intellectual virtue of prudence with
the will, and the reciprocity of both in practice, it must be asked
whether the moral disposition to seek human goods fairly, and today
inclusively, can also be commonly recognized as good or ideal, and
whether it has potential for practical realization on a wide scale. We
will have to offer evidence both that goods can be known and that bias
can be overcome, enabling a reasonable global process of ethical
discourse and change.
GLOBAL ETHICS AND SOLIDARITY
There is no dearth of evidence that basic human material and social
goods are recognized in virtually every human society and culture, but
social institutions much more rarely stabilize and regularize equitable
access to these goods. Global ethics can begin to correct this
disordered situation by encouraging solidarity in moral attitudes, moral
recognition or knowledge, and moral practices. An important step toward
rightly ordered desire and action is taken by the theoretical
identification of solidarity, egalitarianism, and reciprocity as
virtues, not just as enacted toward one's friends but more
inclusively. The insight of Aquinas and his interpreters that cognition
and desire are interdependent factors behind and within choice and
action is exemplified by the practical relevance of even abstract
declarations of human solidarity and mutual respect. Next, practical
steps toward the implementation of theoretical commitments test the
presence and level of the will disposed to seek them as goods. Bona fide
commitments to a global antidisease fund, for example, are proven by
financial donations and the creation of health infrastructures that can
diagnose patients, administer therapies, and counsel preventive
measures. Such actions enhance recognition of health as a good and form
dispositions to act similarly in analogous cases.
For societies as for individuals, knowledge, will, and action are
entwined, with "truth" emerging at the point of their
convergence. The public recognition of cross-cultural, even
"global" values and programs is already a sort of action or
practice that disposes will and emotions to solidarity. Theoretical
recognition, affirmative judgment, choice, and action are always already
preceding and informing each other in the concrete, making any one a
reasonable point of entry for analysis or for practical reinforcement.
The dialectical nature of ethical knowledge, commitment, action,
and truth is reflected in the pluralistic way moral responses to
globalization actually arise. While the diversity in focus and location
of such responses can be interpreted as testifying to their fragmented
and ultimately incommensurable nature, I am convinced such a reading is
a mistake. More credence need not be given to postmodern agnostic theory
about the possibility of a common morality, than to the evidence of a
remarkable convergence of ethically-motivated action in the present
global system. Keck and Sikkink identify "complex global
networks" that reform ideas, influence policy debates, pressure
domestic policy, and enforce or seek to renegotiate international norms
and rules. What they see as distinctive about such networks "is
their transnational nature and the way they are organized around shared
values and discourses." What stimulates network formation is
"core values--ideas about right and wrong." (57) But it is not
just any values or ideas of right and wrong that motivate these
activists. The most important and visible areas of change--human rights,
women's rights and the environment--display a unity of moral
vision, a common commitment to redressing imbalances of power and
well-being so that marginal persons, groups, and nature can flourish.
Inclusiveness, equality, and solidarity are uniting values.
Institutions, practices, and norms that give solidarity life will in
large part be specified contextually and culturally. This does not rule
out some cross-cultural continuities in what can plausibly be regarded
as consistent with the core values (e.g., no terrorism, torture, rape,
genocide, or unlimited emissions of ozone-destroying gases).
Significant global activism around basic human welfare and
solidaristic ideals offers modest evidence that global ethics is in
progress. Programmatic commitments to and activism on behalf of more
inclusive global coexistence are of course neither uniform nor
triumphant. Yet their level of success does warrant the hope that, if
reinforced by institutional safeguards and appropriate coercive
sanctions (not necessarily emanating from a sole "world
authority" as envisioned by John XXIII), reasonable moral judgment
and solidaristic commitments to action could influence the global moral
environment toward more equitable access to such basic goods as food,
health care, sexual self-determination, safety from violence, religious
freedom and political participation. Journalist and culture critic
William Greider observes that the global "common good" depends
on a sense of shared purpose that communications technologies today make
possible but profound economic disparities subvert. (58) Yet we need not
rule out the possibility that a new "virtuous circle" might
emerge in which rich nations realize that responsible behavior is to the
ultimate advantage of all, and that satisfaction for "defending the
common good" is a sometimes sufficient reward for virtue. (59)
Especially in view of the practical conditions and dimensions of
global ethics, as a process rooted in actual communities and cultures,
the diverse religions and moralities in which people live have an
important role. Religious and moral forms of life can instantiate practices, illuminate knowledge, and habituate the will. In Christian
terms, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of wisdom to guide prudence toward
conforming with love. (60) In the words of Emmanuel Katongole,
"What is needed is an alternative politics in which, because it is
grounded on an ontology of peace and commonality, difference and
indeterminacy do not necessarily imply violence." (61)
Reinterpreting Stanley Hauerwas's characterization of Christian
social action as "witness," Katongole uses this term for
intercommunal engagement under the realization that one's own
convictions may be questionable, and that the values of another
tradition may correct them. (62) Objectivity reinterpreted demands no
crude conquest of alien convictions and viewpoints but rather revision,
extension, confirmation, and critical rejection of ideas and practices,
always going forward in trust that engagement can be productive and
agreement often achieved, (63) because certain parameters of human
flourishing are shared.
As far as global ethics is concerned, good theory is important
because philosophy and theology aim at truth, but also because theory is
dialectically related to practice. Good theory enables good practice and
vice versa. Old theories of "nature" and "universal
morality" did not meet the tests of inclusive, egalitarian,
compassionate practice that religions idealize and that international,
intercultural statements and programs increasingly uphold. Narrative
accounts and alternative tradition-based moral perspectives from
formerly excluded communities are overriding these old theories in new,
provocative, threatening, yet exhilarating ways. But neither liberal
theory nor Euro-American deconstructive and postmodern rejoinders have
been able to strike a "new harmony" (Phan) with these voices
strong enough to restrain the "Western-inspired capitalist
economy" (Katongole) that has become the de facto morality of
globalization, nor the violent retaliation that is its dark shadow.
Perhaps greater success can be achieved by an internally diverse and
participatory approach that reaffirms commonality and even global ethics
in a prophetic mandate for solidarity in the common good.
(1) David Hollenbach, S. J., "Afterword: A Community of
Freedom," in Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American
Public Philosophy, ed. Bruce Douglass and David Hollenbach (New York:
Cambridge University, 1994) 334. See also, David Hollenbach, S. J.,
"Common Good," in Judith A. Dwyer, ed., The New Dictionary of
Catholic Social Thought (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1994) 192-96.
(2) John XII, Pacem in terris, no. 57, in David J. O'Brien and
Thomas A. Shannon, ed., Catholic Thought: The Documentary Heritage
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998) 140.
(3) See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and
Interdependence, 3rd ed. (Addison-Wesley, 2000); Joseph S. Nye Jr. and
John D. Donahue, ed., Governance in a Globalizing World (Cambridge,
Mass. and Washington: Visions of Governance for the 21st Century and
Brookings Institution, 2000); and David Held, Anthony G. McGrew, David
Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics,
Economics and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University, 1999).
(4) For illustrations of radical Islamic fear of a
"Zionist-Crusader alliance" and some of its historical roots,
see Michael Scott Doran, "Somebody Else's Civil War,"
Foreign Affairs 81/1 (2002) 22-42.
(5) Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, as
quoted by Sarah Lyall, "In Nobel Talk, Annan Sees Each Human Life
as the Prize," New York Times, December 11, 2001, A3.
(6) Ibid., A3.
(7) This aim is voiced in Michael A. Fahey's editorial for the
TS 62/1 (March, 2001). It is exemplified in the issue on Black Catholic
theology 61/4 (December, 2000), and in essays such as Peter C. Phan,
"Method in Liberation Theologies," TS 61 (2000) 40-63; James
T. Bretzke, S. J., "Moral Theology out of East Asia," TS 61
(2000) 106-121; Maureen A. Tilley, "The Collapse of a Collegial Church: North African Christianity on the Eve of Islam," TS 62
(2001) 3-22; Jean Porter, "The Search for a Global Ethic," TS
62 (2001) 105-21; William R. O'Neill, S. J., "African Moral
Theology," TS 62 (2001) 122-39; and Peter C. Phan, "The Wisdom
of Holy Fools in Postmodernity," TS 62 (2001) 675-700.
(8) Porter, "Search for a Global Ethic" 120.
(9) O'Neill, "African Moral Theology" 131,135, 138.
(10) Porter, "Search for a Global Ethic" 120.
(11) Recent international Catholic ventures in this regard include
Karl-Josef Kuschel and Dietmar Mieth, ed., Concilium 2001/4: In Search
of Universal Values (London: SCM, 2001); and J. S. Boswell, F. P.
McHugh, and J. Verstraeten, Catholic Social Thought: Twilight or
Renaissance? (Leuven: Peeters, 2000).
(12) Emmanuel Katongole, Beyond Universal Reason: The Relation
between Religion and Ethics in the Work of Stanley Hauerwas (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame, 2000) 221.
(13) See Gary Teeple, Globalization and the Decline of Social
Reform: Into the Twenty-First Century, rev. ed (New York: Prometheus
Books, 2000). On the importance of a revived notion of common good in
dealing with phenomena like transnational capital and global finance in
a newly interdependent world, see John A. Coleman, S. J.,
"Retrieving or Reinventing Social Catholicism: A Transatlantic
Response" in Catholic Social Thought 281-86.
(14) Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond
Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University, 1998).
(15) A longstanding project to bring religions together around
issues of global responsibility is the Parliament of the World's
Religion; see Hans Kung and Helmut Schmidt, ed., A Global Ethic and
Global Responsibilities: Two Declarations (London: SCM, 1998); and
several essays in In Search of Universal Values.
(16) Coleman, "Retrieving or Re-inventing Social
Catholicism" 290.
(17) Beyond Universal Reason 177.
(18) See Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism:
Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1985). For a strong theological endorsement of theological
pragmatism, see Sheila Greeve Davaney, Pragmatic Historicism: A Theology
for the Twenty-First Century (Albany: State University of New York,
2000).
(19) J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality: Toward
Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1999) 174. Another philosopher of science who defends a "modest
realism" in science and political ethics is Philip Kitcher,
Science, Truth and Democracy (New York: Oxford University, 2001).
(20) Ibid. 216.
(21) Emmanuel Katongole, "The `Faces' of African
Philosophy: On Being `Placed' by Western Paradigms and/or
Misrepresentations," St. Augustine Papers 1/1 (2000) 5-13.
Published by St. Augustine College of South Africa, PO Box 436,
Bedfordview 2008 <cusa@global.co.za).
(22) Leila Ahmed, Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A
Woman's Journey (New York: Penguin, 1999) 239.
(23) TS offers access to much of this literature, as referenced in
n. 7 above.
(24) Porter, "Search for a Global Ethic" 119-21.
(25) Beyond Universal Reason 137.
(26) See Thomas F. O'Meara, O. P., Thomas Aquinas: Theologian
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1997); Jean Porter, Natural and
Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1999); and Stephen J. Pope, "Overview of the Theological
Ethics of Thomas Aquinas," in Stephen J. Pope, ed., The Ethics of
Aquinas (Washington: Georgetown University, 2002) 30-33. My thanks to
Stephen Pope for many helpful criticisms of my discussion of Aquinas.
For a review of several additional works in a similar vein, see Joseph
Wawrykow, "New Directions in Research on Thomas Aquinas,"
Religious Studies Review 27/1 (2001) 32-38.
(27) Daniel Westburg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action,
and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
(28) Pamela M. Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law: An
Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame, 1994).
(29) Confirming this conclusion is virtually every contribution in
Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S. J., ed., Readings in
Moral Theology No. 7: Natural Law and Theology (New York: Paulist,
1991).
(30) In a post-September 11 article on human rights, Michael
Ignatieff defends a concept central to modern encyclicals, human rights,
on the basis of its wide appeal to the disempowered, its ability to
challenge the inequality of cultures and civilizations, and its power to
ground deliberation "in a basic intuition that what is pain and
humiliation for you is bound to be pain and humiliation for me"
("The Attack on Human Rights," Foreign Affairs 80/6 (2001)
116. In a surprising political turn, World Bank spokespersons and
documents have begun to sound like recent popes, endorsing development
goals in terms of inclusion, participation, solidarity, and common human
resources and aspirations. See James D. Wolfensohn, "The Other
Crisis," Address to the Board of Governors, October 6, 1998
(Washington: The World Bank, 1998); World Development Report 2000/2001:
Attacking Poverty (New York: Oxford University, 2001). See also an essay
by a former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel
Camdessus, "Church Social Teaching and Globalization," America
185 (2001) 6-12; and June O'Connor, "Making a Case for the
Common Good in a Global Economy: The United Nations Human Development
Reports (1990-2001)," Journal of Religious Ethics 30 (2002) 157-73.
(31) Summa theologiae (hereafter cited as ST) 1-2, q. 57, aa. 4-6;
q. 58, aa. 3-5; q. 61, a. 1. These articles contain key statements about
prudence as an intellectual virtue. Subsequent citations of the ST shall
be given in the text.
(32) See, for instance, Michael B. Crowe, "The Pursuit of the
Natural Law," in Curran and McCormick, Natural Law 296-332
(originally published in the Irish Theological Quarterly, 1971).
(33) Hall, Narrative and Natural Law 94; Jean Porter, The
Rediscovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for Christian Ethics
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990) 122, affirms the relevance of
individual circumstances to the exercise of prudence.
(34) Aquinas writes of widely recognized basic inclinations and the
general precepts based on them in ST 1-2, q. 94, a. 2. In ST 1-2, q.
100, he affirms that "every judgment of practical reason proceeds
from principles known naturally" (a. 1), but also states that some
of the more particular precepts of the natural law are better known by
the wise and are clarified by revelation (a. 1, a. 3, a. 5). For a
discussion, see Stephen J. Pope, "Knowability of the Natural Law: A
Foundation for Ethics of the Common Good," in James Donahue and M.
Theresa Moser, R. S. C. J., Religion, Ethics, and the Common Good
(Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996; The Annual Publication
of the College Theology Society, Vol. 41) 57-59.
(35) Gregory M. Reichberg, "The Intellectual Virtues (Ia IIae,
qq. 57-58)" in Pope, Ethics of Aquinas 134.
(36) Ibid. 135.
(37) Ibid. 139.
(38) See n. 34 above.
(39) Francis Schussler Fiorenza writes of "criss-crossing
judgments" yielding a "broad reflective equilibrium"
("The Challenge of Pluralism and Globalization to Ethical
Reflection," In Search of Universal Values 70-85).
(40) Phan, "Method in Liberation Theology" 59, 60, 61,
respectively.
(41) Ibid. 63.
(42) Jean Porter attributes the moral values of the natural law to
a historical and theological tradition whose values cannot in fact be
generalized (Natural and Divine Law 108, 141-44).
(43) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly 55/2, United
Nations Millennium Declaration, September 8, 2000, available at the
United Nations Website, <www.un. org/millennium/declaration/aes
552e.htm>.
(44) General Assembly Declaration of Commitment on H.I.V./AIDS, 28
June 2001, excerpted in "From the U.N.'s Statement on AIDS:
`Prevention Must Be the Mainstay,'" New York Times, 29 June
2001, A8.
(45) Robert F. Drinan, S. J., The Mobilization of Shame: A World
View of Human Rights (New Haven: Yale University, 2001).
(46) Westberg, Right Practical Reason 82, 84, 246-47.
(47) Ibid. 61, 65, 195.
(48) Ibid. 85.
(49) Ibid. 247. Similarly, according to James F. Keenen, S. J.,
"the mutual dependency of prudence and the moral virtues (this is
not a vicious circle but rather an evolving spiral [the metaphor is
attributed to Thomas Kopfensteiner]) incorporates and integrates moral
reasoning into an evolving vision of the human person" ("The
Virtue of Prudence (IIa IIae, qq. 47-57)," in Pope, Ethics of
Aquinas 259.
(50) Ibid. 215.
(51) Ibid. 247.
(52) Eberhard Schockenhoff distinguishes Aquinas from Augustine on
this point. Whereas Augustine sees any act without charity as merely an
act of sinful self-love, for Aquinas, "the virtues of the natural
human being in their orientation to the particular ends of human
practice deserve their own human significance, which is not destroyed by
the absence of charity." Though imperfect, the natural virtues are
sinful only when they prevent one from pursuing the final end of love of
God (ST 2-2, q. 23, a. 7) (Schockenhoff, "The Virtue of Charity
(IIa IIae, qq. 23-46)," in Pope, Ethics of Aquinas 251). The point
is confirmed by Keenan, "Prudence" 266-67 and Clifford G.
Kossel, S. J., "Natural Law and Human Law (Ia Ilae qq. 90-97)"
176-78, both in Pope, Ethics of Aquinas.
(53) See John Paul II, "Towards a Common Ethical Code for
Humankind," Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences 2001; and World Council of Churches, "The Need for a Global
Ethic," Declaration by the Eighth General Assembly in 1998, both in
In Search of Universal Values 7-14 and 15-18, respectively.
(54) Michael Amaladoss, S. J., "Religions for Peace,"
America 185 (December 10, 2001) 6-8, at 7, 8.
(55) A. S. Cua, Moral Vision and Tradition: Essays in Chinese
Ethics (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1998) 274; on
universality, 307. See also Bretzke, "Moral Theology out of East
Asia" 111-12.
(56) Anthony C. Yu, "Enduring Change: Confucianism and the
Prospect of Human Rights," Lingnan Journal of Chinese Studies, New
Series No. 2 (October 2000) 27-70.
(57) Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders 199, 200, 201
respectively.
(58) William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of
Global Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997) 461.
(59) Ibid. 463.
(60) Pope, "Knowability of the Natural Law" 62.
(61) Katongole, Beyond Universal Reason 233.
(62) Ibid. 150.
(63) Ibid. 167, 170.
LISA SOWLE CAHILL is the J. Donald Monan, S.J., Professor of
Theology at Boston College. A frequent contributor to Theological
Studies, she specializes in Christian ethics, bioethics, and the ethics
of sex and gender. Her most recent book is Family: A Christian Social
Perspective (Fortress, 2000). She is also editing a monograph entitled
Genetics, Theology, Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation.