Abstract

An overall view of the 50 year’s issues of the ›Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik‹ tries to get on the track of the main discussions by often prominent authors. In the fifties and sixties of the 20th century the periodical offered the rare case of intellectual and ethical alternatives to preceding theologies which were in an affinity to antidemocratic traditions. The tradition of the ›kingdom of God‹ was rehabilitated to overcome a theology of divine orders, but the interpretation oscillated. Perspectives of universalization and the sense of democracy and human rights were developed. A simple proposition of divine commandments was overcome by differentiated models of ethical judgment. Fundamental assumptions, however, were pluralistic. For more than twenty years the periodical was ahead of continental practical philosophy which was revived in the last quarter of the century