The Ethics of Everyday Life

The moments in Christ's human life noted in the creeds (his conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial) are events which would likely appear in a syllabus for a course in social anthropology, for they are of special interest and concern in human life, and also sites of contention and controversy, where what it is to be human is discovered, constructed, and contested. In other words, these are the occasions for profound and continuing questioning regarding the meaning of human life, as controversies to do with IVF, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of bodies or body parts post mortem plainly indicate. Thus the following questions arise, how do the instances in Christ's life represent human life, and how do these representations relate to present day cultural norms, expectations, and newly emerging modes of relationship, themselves shaping and framing human life? How does the Christian imagination of human life, which dwells on and draws from the life of Christ, not only articulate its own, but also come into conversation with and engage other moral imaginaries of the human? Michael Banner argues that consideration of these questions requires study of moral theology, therefore, he reconceives its nature and tasks, and in particular, its engagement with social anthropology. Drawing from social anthropology and Christian thought and practice from many periods, and influenced especially by his engagement in public policy matters including as a member of the UK's Human Tissue Authority, Banner aims to develop the outlines of an everyday ethics, stretching from before the cradle to after the grave.

Auteur

Michael Banner is Dean and Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His publications include Christian Ethics: A Brief History (Wiley Blackwell, 2009) and Ethics and the Doctrine of God, edited with A.T. Torrance (T & T Clark, 2004).

Contenu

Preface and acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Moral Theology, Moral Philosophy, Social Anthropology, and the State We Are In: On (the Lack of) Everyday Ethics; 2 Conceiving Conception: On IVF, Virgin Births, and the Troubling of Kinship; 3 Being Born and Being Born Again: On Having or Not Having a Child of One's Own; 4 Regarding Suffering: On the Discovery of the Pain of Christ, the Politics of Compassion, and the Contemporary Mediation of the Woes of the World; 5 Dying and 'Death before Death': On Hospices, Euthanasia, Alzheimer's, and on (not) Knowing How to Dwindle; 6 Contesting Burial and Mourning: On Relics, Alder Hey, and Keeping the Dead Close; 7 Remembering Christ and Making Time Count: On the Practice and Politics of Memory; 8 In Conclusion: Some Final (but not Last) Word; Bibliography; Index