Abstract
Few people would characterize H. Tristram Engelhardt’s thought as “communitarian.” For many in bioethics Engelhardt is widely regarded as a committed libertarian and secular humanist. This is not the case. This essay will argue that Engelhardt is not a libertarian by choice but by default. His libertarian conclusions can only be understood in light of his arguments about the failure of the modern philosophical enterprise in ethics and the implications of the postmodern dilemma. I think if one understands that the heart of his work is an assessment of the modern philosophical project in ethics then one can (1) bring together his libertarian views about the moral limits of the secular state with (2) his communitarian views of morality. The two conclusions flow from his argument about postmodernity.
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Notes
M. T. Cicero, De Res Publica, trans. C. W. Keyes, (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1928).
Dikaion nomikon (positive law) and dikaion physikon (natural law). See Francis de Zulueta, The Institutes of Gaius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), Vol. 2, p. 13.
One can trace this movement by the shift of the center of theological reflection from the monastery to the cathedral schools. The scholastic methodology led to the systematic and comprehensive study of theology as an academic discipline (See Jean LecIercq, “From St. Gregory to St. Bernard” in The Spirituality of the Middle Ages, vol. 2 of A History of Christian Spirituality by J. Leclercq, F. Vandenbrouche, and L. Bouyer (New York: The Seabury Press, 1968). Scholastic theology was not rationalistic. Indeed one finds in St. Thomas Aquinas a careful exploration of the relationship of faith and reason. He writes: “Therefore it is useful that besides philosophical science there should be other knowledge...[I]t was necessary that there should be a knowledge revealed by God, besides philosophical science built up by human reason...Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known by divine revelation” (Summa Theologica [Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1948], I, Q. 1, art. 1). Yet scholasticism was often tempted by rationalism (See, Chrysostom Frank, “St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Eastern Christian Tradition,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 36, 315–328). One can trace the centrality of natural, philosophical reason through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and find that theologians in the 17th century responded to atheism with a defense of Christianity “without appeal to anything Christian” (See, Michael Buckley, At The Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 67. The first Vatican Council officially promulgated the Church’s position that the existence of God could be known by natural reason (“Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, creatorem et Dominum Nostrum, per ea, quae facta sunt, naturalit rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci no posse: anathema sit,” Canones 2, De Revelatione, #1, cited in H. Denzinger & A. Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), #3026. See also, Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, Q. 93.
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality (London: SCM Press, 1991).
See I. Kant, The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, 1949); T. Nagel, The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), especially Chapters One and Two.
See J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), and Engelhardt, Foundations.
P. Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
R. Veatch, A Theory of Medical Ethics (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
N. Daniels, Just Health Care (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th Ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
See B. A. Brody, “Quality of Scholarship in Bioethics,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (1990); R. Green, “Method in Bioethics,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (1990); K. D. Clouser and B. Gert, “A Critique of Principlism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (1990); B. A. Lustig, “Principles: A Critique of the Critique,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (1990); D. De Grazia, “Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and Specified Principlism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (1990).
Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
K. W. Wildes, “The Priesthood of Bioethics and the Return of Casuistry,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 18 (1993): 33–49.
Engelhardt, Foundations, viii.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 7.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 74.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 74.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 76.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 74.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 11.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 81.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 24 n. 13.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 78.
The penalty is as follows: “A person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.” (A latae sententiae penalty is a penalty inflicted by the law itself upon commission of the offense. It is distinguished from a ferendae sententiae penalty which is imposed by the action of a judge or superior.) See, Code of Canon Law (Washington, D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1983), c. #1398.
See George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Marsden argues the Protestant universalism became the very ideology that undermined strong Christian beliefs in Protestant universities.
L. S. Cahill, “Theology and Bioethics: Should Religious Traditions Have a Public Voice?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 17: 263–272.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 80.
Engelhardt, Foundations, 27 n. 17; Bioethics and Secular Humanism, 33–40.
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Wildes, K.W. (1997). Engelhardt’s Communitarian Ethics: The Hidden Assumptions. In: Minogue, B.P., Palmer-Fernández, G., Reagan, J.E. (eds) Reading Engelhardt. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5530-4_5
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