What is ethics all about? In this book Herbert McCabe suggests that it is about loving, obeying laws, and talking to people. In doing so, he offers an introduction to ethical thinking for anyone with a serious interest in moral philosophy. He does so as someone who writes with a Christian audience in mind. Most of his arguments, however, do not presuppose a believing Christian readership. McCabe, who died in 2001, was no ivory tower theologian. As a Christian thinker of astonishing originality, he was fully engaged with the world and its political and social realities and was able to comment on what it is for Christians to try to live ethically. He was also a gifted philosopher, as this book clearly indicates. So he was able to comment on human action and the difference between 'good' and 'bad' without seeming to 'preach to the choir'.

He took Christianity to be deeply subversive of capitalism since it declares as possible the (to us) improbable prospect that people might live together without war or domination or antagonism but by unity in love. Christians, argues McCabe, are not under the illusion that mankind is sinless, or that sin is easily overcome, but believe it will be overcome. But Christianity, says McCabe, is not an ideal theory. It is a praxis, a particular kind of practical challenge to the world. Real revolutionaries are loving, kind, calm, unprovoked to anger. They do not hit back when someone strikes them. They do not insist on their own way. They endure all things. And they are extremely dangerous. For McCabe, right ethical thinking leads, in the end, to a view of ourselves which many do not share. In this book he invites us to try to understand how and why that might be so.

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ISBN: 9780826472984
Catalogue code: N/A
Publisher: CROSSROAD/CONTINUUM PUB G - published 15/09/2003
Format: Paperback