Priorities and Christian Ethics

A theological and philosophical treatment of the question, should we give priority to our nearest or to the neediest?

Garth L. Hallett (Author)

9780521090858, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 November 2008

220 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.29 kg

"This book is an exemplary piece of casuistry in the best sense of the word...wonderful...To read this book is to be invited into a world of rare moral beauty. This book has the kind of authority that arises when a thinker sympathetically entertains arguments that are contrary to his own. This makes the book a rewarding experience, a real page turner as the reader tries to follow myriad well-told arguments regarding a concrete case that, by analogy, is the story of our lives, the situation about which each of us makes decisions every day, directing our resources either toward the nearest of the neediest every time we open our wallets." The Journal of Religion

This book provides a full treatment of an issue which is particularly pressing: when the claims of the nearest (e.g. parents, children, spouses, friends) conflict with the claims of the neediest, as they constantly do, where should preference go? Professor Hallett focuses first on a specific, representative case, pitting the lesser need of a son against the greater need of starving strangers. He brings to bear on this single paradigm all the resources of theological and philosophical reflection - scriptures, patristic teaching, the Thomistic tradition, current debates - and from this single example he sheds light on a wide range of comparable cases, both private and public. This distinctive strategy leads to distinctive and challenging results, and at the same time helps to clarify the traditional 'order of charity' and the celebrated 'preferential option for the poor'.

Acknowledgments
1. A thorny question
2. Finding a focus
3. New Testament intimations
4. Patristic positions
5. The Thomistic tradition
6. Contemporary considerations
7. Comparable conflicts
Works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]