A Cluster of Terms, Cheeping Away

            Reading Christian Ethics: An Essential Guide has only reminded me of how little I know. What is ethics? What is morality? Can the words really be used interchangeably? How significant is the difference between the Protestant Christian-ethics tradition, which emerged in the nineteenth century; and the Roman Catholic moral-theology tradition, which arose after the Council of Trent but has been revised since Vatican II? How can I keep from getting so wrapped up in the question, What is this all about? that I forget the more vital question, What should I do?

            Nevertheless, taking a graduate level course involves grappling with unfamiliar concepts and terms and digging deeper into familiar ones. I tried constructing a glossary, but the terms were incredibly slippery: I kept having to rewrite the definitions. I’m beginning to wonder, despite the heroic efforts of dictionariasts, whether any term can be understood outside of a context. So I’ll invent one, a context that will be helpful to no one but myself. Mine is the context of things-I’d-like-to-be-more-comfortable-with. It looks like a tight little cluster of baby chicks, all bright yellow and cheep-cheeping unmelodically:

            Morality; ethics; moral philosophy; moral theology and Christian ethics; metaethics and normative ethics; descriptive and constructive ethics; rights-and-duties (deontological) ethics; goal or consequentialist (teleological) ethics; virtue and character (aretological) ethics; conscience; the good life; “doing the right thing”; natural law ethics; biblical ethics; situation ethics; the moral life; the moral law; social ethics; the social gospel; context, content and motivation in the moral life; object, intention and circumstances in moral acts (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church); the human, which includes the cardinal, virtues; prudence in particular, because it leads to the discernment I wish to develop with respect to the movies; the theological virtues; the morality of art (a concept in John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction); the question of whether movies are art (see Johnston); ethos; a dialectic of ethos and ethic; the autonomy school of moral theology; the argument from morality.

            See, if I get the chicks right there in a cluster where I can see them and put a little fence around them, I won’t lose any. With all the racket they’re making, I have no idea what they’re saying; but maybe one or two will think to look at me directly, and then I can read their beaks.

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