Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article surveys recent literature in philosophy and Christian ethics to consider how Christian ethics might benefit from attending more robustly to the potential goods of moral failure. Dominant approaches tend to treat moral failure primarily as a problem, analyzing intentions, actions, and consequences to adjudicate moral responsibility and issue action guidance. What, if any, tasks of Christian ethics might such methods neglect? This article brackets concerns about moral judgement to explore this question across four major categories of moral failure: that produced by impossible situations; that produced by structural injustice; that produced because problems overwhelm our capacities for solving them; and that which results from prioritizing ‘morality’ over other moral pursuits or any one moral project at the expense of others. The article highlights goods relevant to each type, identifying the ways moral failure can foster—rather than frustrate—the aims of Christian ethics.
Source: Studies in Christian Ethics
Author: Karen V. Guth
Institution: College of the Holy Cross
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4406527404