RT Article
T1 Virtue Ethics, Social Difference, and the Challenge of an Embodied Politics
JF Journal of religious ethics
VO 41
IS 1
SP 27
OP 49
A1 Dunn, Shannon
LA English
YR 2013
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1822388007
AB Following the revival of virtue theory, some moral theorists have argued that virtue ethics can provide the basis for a radical politics. Such a politics essentially departs from the liberal model of the moral agent as an autonomous reason-giver. It instead privileges an understanding of the agent as conditioned by her community, and in the case of social oppression and marginalization, communal virtues may become a vehicle for social change. This essay compares political appropriations of virtue theory by Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas and secular feminist thinkers Lisa Tessman and Margaret Urban Walker. Hauerwas and feminist theorists both embrace a kind of embodied vulnerability as a political virtue, arguing that it enables more genuine social recognition. The virtue feminist critique is more robust than Hauerwas's, however, insofar as it understands mutual recognition to involve acknowledgment of social difference and the concomitant pursuit of justice.
K1 Suffering
K1 Courage
K1 Virtue Ethics
K1 Lisa Tessman
K1 Margaret Urban Walker
K1 Stanley Hauerwas
DO 10.1111/jore.12003