Community in ethics: A comparative analysis of the work of Thomas Aquinas and Stanley J. Grenz

Community-based ethics, a form of virtue ethics whereby a community shapes the ethical mores, convictions, and standards for behavior, has increased in popularity in recent years within a postmodern context. A central aspect of community-based ethics is the idea of friendship. While the recent development of community-based ethics has taken place within a postmodern context, the discussion of friendship in ethics dates back to pre-modern ethicists, including Aristotle and Aquinas. Even though the discussion dates back more than two millennia, the ontological and epistemological presuppositions of postmodernism differ greatly from those of a pre-modern worldview. The result is that two different ways of incorporating community within two completely different philosophies of virtue ethics have emerged. On one hand, Thomas Aquinas' pre-modern approach incorporates friendship and community within a larger framework of virtue ethics that is grounded in the nature and action of God. On the other hand, Stanley J. Grenz's postmodern approach reduces moral understanding to a relativistic view of virtue ethics where moral values are based upon the way human beings experience friendship and community. Thus, this comparative analysis of the role of community and friendship within the ethical system of a pre-modern ethicist, Thomas Aquinas, and that of a postmodern community-based ethicist, Stanley J. Grenz, demonstrates the disparate conclusions reached via the two distinct worldviews.