Take & read: Ethics

Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reason­ing, and Narrative, by Alasdair Mac­Intyre. Although nothing can replace Alasdair MacIntyre’s earlier works—After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry—his newest venture more directly and generatively presents the case he’s made over a long and distinguished intellectual career. This time he brings his long-standing Marxist commitments into a rich argument that accounts of virtue in late modernity need to address the dominating powers of capitalism. It’s as important a work of philosophy as there has been in some time and a must-read for MacIntyre’s followers, detractors, and everyone in between.

A Good That Transcends: How U.S. Culture Undermines Environmental Reform, by Eric T. Freyfogle. Eric T. Freyfogle thinks that any effort to address environmental issues will need a broad framework if it is to challenge existing cultural presumptions. He also happens to think that Pope Francis provides this framework in his encyclical Laudato si’. Freyfogle does not explicitly espouse the pope’s theological ideas, but neither does he think he needs to since he sees Francis as appealing to common sense, informed by science and moral consciousness. The pope is, after all, speaking about “our common home.”

Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship, by John Swinton. John Swinton is among the leading theologians thinking about the ethics of disability. He has helped us understand what it means to ascribe the notion of “gift” to mental disability. In this wonderful book, Swinton situates that kind of thinking within a theology of time. He suggests that we moderns suffer from a kind of time sickness, whereas those with disabilities witness to a different, healthier life with time, inviting us to live better than we do on our own.