OF EAGLES AND CROWS, LIONS AND OXEN: Blake and the Disruption of Ethics

Yeager, D. M.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9795.2008.00373.x

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…Typically such knowledge has the potential to relativize one's own ideas and offers the possibility of borrowing from others to improve one's moral commitments (see LaFleur 1992; Stalnaker 2006; Oh 2007; and Miller 2016). And, because “religion” is such a capacious category, studying religious ethics enables one to examine a diverse range of cultural data—literary, aesthetic, visual, material, and the like—to examine their ethical dimensions (see Yeager 2009; Bucar 2016).…”

Section: The Anti‐reductive Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

Miller¹

2023

Journal of Religious Ethics

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This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify an Anti‐Reductive Paradigm that is guided by an Egalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field's methods to values that can describe the field's purposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric of Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post‐critical reasoning, social criticism, cross‐cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.

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Section: The Anti‐reductive Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

Miller¹

2023

Journal of Religious Ethics

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“…In a JRE focus issue on William Blake and ethics (37.1), four essays (Altizer ; Hopkins ; Merriman ; and Yeager ) looked at the poetry of Blake as a resource for “moral theology” (Yeager , 8). In spite of this stated goal, none of the essays directly connected his ethics with a substantive account of his theological vision.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Yeager suggests that Blake's theology “was too deviant to be seriously engaged” by the readers of his time (Yeager , 17, discussing Emmet ). Merriman notes the mythic and cryptic nature of Blake's language, and suggests that it alienates Blake's audience from his vision.…”

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confidence: 99%

Re‐embedding Moral Agency

Steck¹

2013

Journal of Religious Ethics

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The connection between ethics and theological vision has become increasingly important for ethics as we better appreciate how the moral agent is embedded in a framework that affectively and intellectually shapes her moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is always reasoning within (that is, within a moral framework, a religious worldview, and/or a set of ideological commitments). A similar framing occurs in literature, which I refer to as its “horizon.” A literary text's horizon comprises the theological and metaphysical commitments that are implied by the text and that the reader relies on to make sense of it. I suggest that there is a parallel between how moral frameworks and literary horizons operate in that both shape moral judgment. I argue that in using literature as a resource for ethics, the same contemporary currents that have led us to appreciate the embeddedness of moral reasoning should also encourage us to give more careful attention to the theological or metaphysical vision implied by a text. Such a “theo‐ethical” reading of literature provides a richer understanding of particular moral goods and the interplay between those goods and ethical themes like agency, hope, and redemption. I substantiate this claim with a reading of William Blake's Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.

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OF EAGLES AND CROWS, LIONS AND OXEN: Blake and the Disruption of Ethics

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

Re‐embedding Moral Agency

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