Agency and theological ethics: The critique of 'modern moral philosophy' from Elizabeth Anscombe to Stanley Hauerwas

Modern moral theories tended to neglect the human being as the subject of deliberation and action. As a result, they lost sight of what makes morality human---i.e. its location within the embodied and intersubjective context of human social life. Elizabeth Anscombe has shown that the speech habits sustained within a community is part of the very form of practical inferences as Aristotle described it. She challenged her fellow philosophers to theorize in a way that would do justice to the fundamentally social human agent.;In this dissertation I argue that Anscombe's insights point to a new appreciation for the role of religious communities in the form of ethical reasoning. In particular, Stanley Hauerwas' ethics, centered on the church as a social body or "agent," goes in the direction indicated by Anscombe. The full picture of the church's ethic as envisioned by Hauerwas comes in the image of an eschatologically-oriented community of a peaceable people.;Hauerwas' account of a Christian community has raised some concerns about how such a community will engage with other communities whose narratives differ from their own. He criticizes Hauerwas on the grounds that he does not provide the resources needed by members of his community to identify their own role in shaping American society. The church has a moral responsibility to participate in the deliberation of "hypercontext" of American democracy. Jeffrey Stout articulates these concerns which for him pertain to how the church is to participate in the "hypercontext" of our national public life in America. While Stout's concerns are reasonable and important, they ought not to cause us to lose sight of the structurally communal nature of practical reasoning.