Abstract

The study argues for the relevance of Gadamer's hermeneutics for constructive theological ethics. Chapter I, Gadamer and the sensus communis, analyses Gadamer's work through exploring his appropriation of phronesis and paideia in Truth and Method and his studies of Plato and Aristotle. The study argues that Gadamer's hermeneutical project develops out of his own ethical concerns and that his reinterpretation of the Greeks and the humanistic tradition articulates an ethics for contemporary society through the recovery of a pre-Enlightenment mode of understanding. In testing Gadamer's anti-Enlightenment critique of the aesthetic consciousness, the study explores major artistic works by Ionesco, Britten, and Wagner. Chapter II, Historical consciousness and theological ethics, explores Gadamer's critique of historical consciousness through an analysis of the Christian ethics of Don Cupitt, who serves as a concrete example of the enlightenment thinking opposed by Gadamer. Cupitt claims to be a post-modern non-foundationalist. However, from a Gadamerian perspective, he simply continues the modernist project. Chapter III, Scientific method and phronesis, gives reasons why scientific modes of knowledge are inappropriate as a model for all other modes of understanding. Focusing upon paideia, the moral philosophy of developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is tested according to Gadamer's theory. Chapter IV, The hermeneutical ethics of H. Richard Niebuhr, introduces a theological ethicist whose work also follows Heidegger. The study argues that the deepening of Niebuhr's ethics by Gadamer's hermeneutics offers a constructive direction in which Christian ethics should go. Chapter V, Imagining transformation: A performative hermeneutics, shows how a Gadamerian-Niebuhrian non-reductive hermeneutical ethics can be developed. Finally, Chapter VI, Gadamer, Niebuhr, Gustafson, shows that the work of James Gustafson, though often seen as continuing Niebuhr's legacy, moves in another direction. Major differences between a hermeneutical and a modernist approach are revealed. The value of a hermeneutical approach to ethics is argued throughout the study and the confluence of Niebuhr's and Gadamer's work is shown to offer a fruitful way forward for Christian ethics seeking to understand both the role of theology and the church in society today.