Treating the subject of life’s endangerment as a pressing theoretical and practical moral concern, a concern that obligates our attention, this course is an invitation to life’s most pressing work. Under the colossal challenges to life in our time, the densely interwoven meanings and values of natural, human, and divine life are highly contested. Deep religious, ethical, and political convictions condition both the public framing of the issues we face and our individual and social responses to them. This situation demands a rigorous application of thought in both our public and private lives.
I. Overview: Object and Method
Gravity:
For various reasons, this time in the history of life is one of unparalleled promise and peril. Our increasing human capacity to intervene within and to alter nature presents us with grave practical challenges. Where in previous historical times the natural world was interpreted as a relatively stable backdrop to human behavior, contemporary human efficacy is now capable not only of radically altering but of possibly destroying the conditions necessary to sustain life. Further, new possibilities in genetic science and technology mean that human life has crossed a moral threshold from being not only an agent but also an object of technological change. Life, human and other-than-human, is more vulnerable than ever before. A multitude of ethical and theological implications attend this radical shift in the scope and power of human action. The primary aim of this course is to bring the gravity of these implications to visibility in order better to respond to them.
Depth:
In addition, this course seeks to engage the challenges to life in our time through a deep hermeneutical dialectic. Hermeneutical depth is demanded by the degree of interpenetration among our ideas about animal, human and divine life. For example, how one considers the issue of biological diversity in any concrete situation is shaped by one’s construal of the human relation to other forms of life. For religious thinkers and practitioners, this construal is in turn shaped by understandings of the character and action of the holy within the ordering of life. Once the gravity of life’s vulnerability in our time is registered, adequate moral response needs to flow from an engagement with the deep connections binding descriptive and normative theories of the interrelation of life’s forms.
Breadth:
The moral gravity of life’s vulnerability and the deep hermeneutical structure of this course also require us to be concerned with broad theoretical issues. Living responsibly in a time of life’s endangerment requires that we engage the methodological problem of how critically to think through the divergent ways that life itself is theorized, explored, explained, and understood. As our descriptive and normative accounts of the different forms of life are not hermetically isolated from one another, and thus demand deep critical interpretation, so our response to the various challenges to life cannot be filtered through a single disciplinary framework, and therefore require theoretical breadth. For too long the divisions between “the two-cultures” of scientific and humanistic inquiry, as C.P. Snow put it, have inhibited the development of complex theories that can trace the contact points, intersections, or multidimensional interactions among forms of thought and inquiry. Given the pressing nature of endangerments to life and the fact that this concern cuts across virtually every form of inquiry, one of the pervasive themes of this course concerns how we conceive of knowledge and critical inquiry itself.
II. Evaluation
This course will be conducted as a seminar. I will lead the first half of each of our sessions with a lecture providing context for our discussion and raising important issues. The second half of each session will be dialogical. These dialogues will only be as rich as our individual and collective preparations. Thus each student is responsible for coming to class having read and reflected on the assigned texts as carefully as possible. In place of reflection papers, I expect each student to post one reading-related question to the discussion board on our course Chalk Site, AND to respond to two questions posted by your classmates. This will extend our classroom discussion as well as provide us with some points of entry in class. Student evaluation will be based on participation and two short papers. 15 percent of the grade is based on attendance, 15 percent on the question / response discussion on Chalk, 30 percent on a midterm paper (4-5pp) and 40 on final (5-8pp).
III. Bibliography (all available at the Seminary Coop).
*HG Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
*Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (selections), The Imperative of Responsibility (selections)
*Rosemary Radford Ruether, Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions
*James Gustafson, A Sense of the Divine
*Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology
V. Course Calendar
Week One: Introduction, “What is ethics?” “What is the environment?” “What is life?”
Week Two: Wells and The Forms of Life
Week Three: Jonas I: Problem and Method; Read: Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, Ch. 1 (pp. 1-24); The Phenomenon of Life, Foreword (pp. xi-xxiv), Introduction (pp. 1-6), Second Essay (pp. 38-58), Third Essay (pp. 64-92), Fourth Essay (pp. 99-107).
Week Four: Jonas II: Constructive Proposal; Read: Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, Ninth Essay (pp. 211-234), Eleventh Essay (pp. 262- 281), Epilogue (pp. 282-284); The Imperative of Responsibility, Chs. 4 and 5 (pp. 79-135). 3
Week Five: Ruether I: Problem and Method
Week Six: Ruether II: Constructive Proposal
Week Seven: Gustafson I: Problem and Method
Week Eight: Gustafson II: Constructive Proposal
Week Nine: Borgmann I: Problem, Method and Concepts Read: Borgmann, Power Failure, Introduction (pp. 7-10), Part I (pp. 11-62).
Week Ten: Borgmann II: Constructive Proposal: Focal Concerns and Practices Read: Borgmann, PF, Part II (pp. 65-12